Wedding Cake replica

Hello again,

As I mentioned in my first post, I've been working on a miniature wedding cake as a souvenir for my Mom who makes wedding cakes for friends and family. I helped make the drapes in the original wedding cake which worked out well for making the drapes in the minature. Due to time and space constraints (Mom made the cake in a hotel room and we got some wierd looks in the elevator carrying up a borrowed Kitchen Maid mixer), Mom pre-purchased the lilies, though she is fully capable of making her own.

Here is a side by side comparison (I still haven't figured out how to do a nice job on inserting photos in blogger). My clay cake is just under 5 inches tall.

Some construction notes:

• I used a combination of Kato pearl, white, and translucent for the exterior. I've decided that white is a real pain to work with, impossible to not get stuff in.



• The decorative piping on the middle layer of the cake was accomplished using a toothpick and liquid Sculpey. I tried making thin ribbons of clay and doing it, but it took way too long and I wasn't happy with the effect. Took just over an hour to do the icing detail with the liquid clay and I surprised myself by not smudging it as I was working with it. I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with it at the moment, the liquid clay seems to be yellowing after the baking (it was nice when it came out of the oven) or picking up a grey tinge (almost looks dirty). I'll go over it with a baby wipe and see if that has any effect.



• I tried sculpting a dove cake topper. Not pretty. The real cake topper was a last minute add-on since we ran out of time with the original cake to make a lily topper. So, on the miniature, I made a lily topper.



• Yes, the little balls around the bottom edges are all hand made. I'm fortunate that I have a clayer friend (Janice VanBeek - see her article on kimono dolls in the latest Polymer Cafe) who kept me company while I made them and put them on the cake.



• I'm still having a hard time getting the divider balls between the bottom and middle layers to stick. Weld bond doesn't seem to work and the clay isn't holding them as well. I'll experiment a bit more.



• One of the lilies on the top border broke a small bit of the edge off (sob!). I've been debating on whether to pull it off and risk damaging more of the cake (since it appears to be stuck firmly to the relatively fragile drape) or leave it on. It's not hugely noticeable and when I put the cake topper on the cake I purposely oriented it so that the broken lily is to the back of the cake topper.



• There are probably about 10-20 hours in the cake. I was very much a perfectionist and would tear off anything I wasn't happy with. I took A LOT of time to make the edges smooth.

Here is the cake deconstructed.

By the way, I took the photos using the portable table top photo studio that my husband bought me last year for Christmas. I was too lazy to set up yesterday's ornament shot with it but should have.

I may decide to tackle our wedding cake at some point. But I'm going to give it a rest for now since I still have to figure out how to make snowflake canes my way.