How it all started.......

My cousin (James) turned 21 in February and my hubby (rob) offered to make his birthday cake so the little cogs in my brain began to turn and i thought what can we do to make this cake a bit more interesting.
PENGUIN!!!!!!
James loves penguins so i thought why not how hard could it be?
Turns out, pretty hard. cue the baking of 5 8" sponge cakes, a kilo of black fondant and quite a bit of stress.
I stacked all 5 cakes on top of each other, sandwiched together with butter icing, and began to carve, think bowling pin but fatter!!!
Once i was happy with the shape i butter iced the whole of the cake to smooth the whole thing out and help the fondant to stick and then covered the whole thing with black fondant. When the whole thing was covered i added white fondant to his tummy and white ovals for his eyes. More black fondant for the wings and the pupils and yellow fondant for the beak and feet.
I had bought some pastillage from my local cake decorating centre but as this was the first time I'd used it i was a little nervous, however i managed to make a 21 badge, a set of chopsticks and small gardeners world magazine which i painted with food colouring, since sushi and gardening are some of james' other favourite things.
The whole thing sat on a 10" cake with chunks pulled out of the edge, covered with white fondant and decorated with silver edible glitter to look like an iceberg.
Thankfully the finished article was a resounding success and James even told me it was his favourite birthday present which was a lovely thing to hear.

And so thats how it all started, my crafty nature which had seen me making my own cards, feltr baby booties and various other projects, had spilled over into cake decorating.

Now what was i going to do next.............