Sims 3 Graduation Cake

 I've been up to my eyes in graduation and Father's Day cakes at work, so the last thing I wanted to do was to make one at home. However, my brother needed one, so I had to abide. Plus, he told me it was a Sims 3- themed cake,  and I love The Sims games! I'm a definite recovering addict, but I would relapse in a heartbeat! My cake was strawberry with my usual butter-vanilla buttercream. I cut out a green diamond and placed it on the cake. Then I made the logo out of fondant...

Trimmed it up...

I wrote "the" with buttercream!

Then placed it on the green diamond. I added some balls to the bottom and a snail trail border on top and voila!

Considering I pulled this together after 13 hours of cakes in the bakery, I'm proud of it :) Time of completion: a bit after 1am. Congrats to all those grads out there!

Gumpaste Roses

It's been so long since my last post! OK, OK, OK I will try my best to at least make new posts twice a week. We'll see how that goes...

So I decided to get back into gumpaste since I randomly found a brand new package in my cupboard.

I haven't tried to make my own yet, since I find the Wilton brand gumpaste to work pretty well for me. Eh, I'll try mixing my own someday just to compare. Anyhoo, I took the Wilton courses ages ago, so I wanted to get back into doing roses, at least. I already have the rose cutters (3 sizes), the ball and vein tool, the thick foam, and thin foam from the Wilton Course 3 kit, which is super convenient. However, all of these components are sold at your local craft store separately.

I started with breaking off and kneading my gumpaste with a light dusting of cornstarch and confectioner's sugar mixed together.Then I cut out a flower with the smallest cutter and made it into a cone shape. *At this point, you can slip the cone onto some wire wrapped in florist tape if you want to go a bouquet route. Another easy way to handle the roses is by slipping the cone onto a toothpick and working from there. This reduces handling the gumpaste and making it stickier. *

Next, I rolled out my gumpaste to 1/16 an inch then cut out a flower with the medium cutter. (Make sure to wrap up your unused gumpaste!) I used a spatula to cut notches between each petal, and I placed it on the thin foam pad. I then ruffled the edges of the petals by running the ball tool over the edges to thin them out (dip the ball into the powder mixture if you need to!)

I flipped the flower over and pressed the ball into the middle of the piece to create a cup. Then I applied a bit of piping gel (or water or flavor) into the cup and placed the cone in. 

Now for the next set of directions, I'll refer to the petals as a little man with a head, two legs, and two arms. So I applied some piping gel to the head and wrapped it around the cone. Then the same went for an arm, the opposite leg, the other arm, then that opposite leg. At this point you have a rosebud!

 If you want to continue to a medium rose, cut out another medium-sized flower, cup up two arms, then flip over and cup up the head and legs. Wrap the arms around, then the legs and head...

If you want to continue on to a large rose, use the large cutter and cup all petals, flip over and add to the rest.

Alright, this one looks a bit shabby, but it's my first rose in a couple of years, so I kept practicing then got a little playful with some pink luster dust...

Not too bad! I hope I inspired some of you to try gumpaste! It's not as scary as it seems, and all it takes is a bit of practice! Now to see how this can come together on a cake...