Whimsical Wonderland

In the run up to the BabyExpo, I was originally going to make a three tier Beauty and the Beast cake, something dramatic offer a little 'wow' factor, but about 7 days before the show after watching Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland with my beautiful daughter I was made to change my mind. How could I resist my 3 years old saying please mummy make Mad Hatter and pretty princess Alice... her big blue eyes staring up at me... well that was the start of it. Now I was quite nervous in starting this one, not only were the characters played by real people and not 2D cartoons, they were also quite complex with they attire they wore.

So I decided to just to jump in and start, no going back now otherwise I would have the wrath of my daughter to contend with! I started with The Mad Hatter, he was actually really fun to make, the make-up was very dramatic and small touches such as his bow tie made the world of difference to the overall look of him.

Once I had conquered The Hatter it was time to start with Alice. NOW Alice was going to be harder, there was no funky make up to help her look more like, well her. She had gorgeous golden ringlets and a natural flawless skin tone.

So I began, the same way I start the majority of my characters, head first. I always use cocoform for the majority of my characters, as mentioned before it is a fantastic medium to use for fine detailing.

As you can see the start is a bit um, scary looking but as always after a bit more work you can start to see the results.

After modelling her body shape I then had to dress her, 3 layers of clothing later her dress was almost finished.

Now I had to add her arms before I could place the last part of her dress on her and start to add her hair.

And after all of that work she was finally finished.

After seeing the Mad Hatter and Alice together, although they looked great there was something missing, on a three tier cake there needed to add another character, originally it was going to be the rabbit, but there was something mysterious about Absolute, along with his deep blue colouring, I thought he was the perfect addition to add a little drama to the cake. He was made completely out of pale blue cocoform and given dimension using various dusts and colours. I am really pleased with the overall cake and now just want someone to commission me to do something even larger with all of the characters.... any takers?



BabyExpo Boom

Well I have just about re-couped from the busy weekend of the BabyExpo Brighton and am ready to add another post to the Blog.

BabyExpo Brighton was a huge success! We received a great response from the visitors and loads of fantastic comments and remarks, even had some comparing us to 'Ace of Cakes' and ahem 'Cake Boss'.. well they were very lovely things to hear as I am an avid watcher of both programmes!

The main attraction was our Alice in Wonderland cake (Tim Burton's Version) and our little Gruffalo cake, I don't think any parent can resist the tale of the deep dark woods. I do have to admit though, the main thing that made me smile on the day was seeing the children's faces drop with amazement and ask over and over again if they were really cakes (and beg their parents to buy them one)... Please parents do buy :-)

A huge thanks to the organizers, the visitors and of course the other exhibitors who made the day a great success. We got to meet lots of great companies, the one and only Mister Maker and the gorgeous Patsy Palmer.

Here are a few images of our exhibition cakes,

Hope you like!

Princess & the Frog

The good old fairytale that every girl must kiss a few frogs to find her Prince, not too far from reality as most of us girls will know; but how could anyone resist the charm of Naveen in his frog form, charasmatic and full of charm he oozes personality, so when I was commissioned to make a Princess and the frog cake I was really excited about the possibilities.

I originally thought of having Tiana sitting on the top tier of the cake with her gown cascading over it, with Naveen standing on the bottom tier staring up at Tiana, but after trolling through material to get inspiration I came across the Official Poster Scene of Tiana sitting in the Bayou with Naveen in her hands. I then started to make Tiana out of modelling chocolate, this medium is excellent for moulding as it never completely 'dries out' so it allows time to add features to make the character come to life. Now turning a 2D cartoon character into a 3D model is a little harder than first expected as the face has to look in proportion from all angles not just the front as a cartoon is seen. SO I began...

The start of Tiana

After Tiana was finished, the baking commenced (and a lot of eating of the off cuts of Vanilla sponge... Yum). Next was the colour choices, I adored the deep dark colouring of the poster, but for a 4 year olds cake it couldn't be too dark and dramatic, we all know girls love a bit of pink and purple! I decided to cover the top tier in a deep midnight Teal colouring but lightened it by having paler green foliage cascading down the tier. The bottom tier was going to originally be pale green with a purple bow wrapped around it, but as the idea of the cake was to be set outside I felt the flowers would work better and still add the feminine touch.

So here it is finished! Hope you like it!

Disney Designs!

Hello to everyone reading this!

I have decided to join the world of Blogging! (and am quite excited about it).

So whats in store... Well the time has come for me to unvail the start of a few projects for an upcoming exhibition! Disney is Epic, every child has a favorite Dinsey film or character, so this seems like the perfect theme to run with for our new range of Children's cake designs.

So... Here are are a few sneek peek pictures of the start of the Disneymania to follow...