Now For Something A Bit Different

    Today instead of showing you a card, (well I might show you a card as well ) I am showing you a cake that I made last week for my sons' wedding at the weekend. It was a basic sponge cake which is quite easy to make except that I wasn't too sure how a 12" sponge would cook, so I started off by making six 6" cakes.  Then I trimmed them and sliced them in half then sandwiched them back together with apricot jam and butter cream. I arranged it so that I had four flat bottoms at the top to make an even surface to ice, and fixed the four three layer cakes together with more butter cream. I have to say here that I am no master baker or cake decorator but I can cook a decent cake and I learnt basic decorating techniques many years ago at school, and have done a few family ones before. On this occasion I opted for the ready made icing that just has to be rolled out.

I spread a thin layer of the jam all over the cake and carefully lifted the rolled out icing onto it, then it was a case of smoothing it over and trimming the edges. I then left it to dry while I had a go at making some sugar roses, which I made a right mess of, so I decided to stick to what I do best and made a paper craft ornament instead.I looked out these two paper lace hearts that I've had for ages and layered them onto some pale lilac pearl card which I cut slightly smaller than the lace ones. I made the roses with some patterned paper and inked the edges and back with duty concord Distress ink.I made some with stamped and cut out flowers and some with a Marianne Creatables die, which cuts a spiral that you have to roll up,I find it very fiddly but they are quite effective.I also cut two leafy fronds, also a Marianne die, and layered them all together adding a little Crytsal Stickles to the roses. I fixed a piece of foil covered card to the back and attached it to the cake with some icing. I mixed a small amount of royal icing to pipe congratulations and their names with very wobbly hands. I did this first with white icing and then again over the top with lilac.

 It was neither as fine or as neat as a professional but it was reasonably presentable.Having reached the end of my patience with the piping bag I decided that I didn't want to pipe all the way around the bottom of the cake, so I coloured some of the left over roll out icing lilac and rolled it into some long strings and then did the same with some white and then twisted them together to make a rope and used it decorate the bottom edge. I then made some little organza bows to finish the corners.

         Now just because I said I might , here is the card that I made for them. I used mauve and lilac pearlised card, and a strip of patterned pearl paper. The back ground was stamped with Brilliance Lavender, and the other images with Versamark and embossed with white powder. All the stamps are by Chocolate Baroque, the letters were cut with aTim Holtz Alterations die, once upon a time, and the scalloped edge with a Fiskars punch.The card was finished with a silk ribbon bow and some matching pearls.
        
       I should probably just add that every thing went well on the day and we all enjoyed ourselves.