So......several months ago I met a lovely couple called Nadia and Ben.
Nadia is obsessed with shoes.
It had been decided with the agreement of her other half, that the cake would be shoe inspired.
With the majority of that inspiration coming from the designer Salvatore Ferragamo.
When Salvatore Ferragamo died in 1960 he had realised the great dream of his life: to create and produce the most beautiful shoes in the world. His family was left the task of carrying on and fulfilling the plan that Salvatore had nurtured in his final years: transforming Ferragamo into a great fashion house.
Nadia had chosen some specially designed 'Ferragamo Shoe' stationary to illustrate her love of all things 'shoe'.......
And had asked me to put it on a cake!
The stationary was either illustrated on a black background or a white background, as seen in the picture below with the table menus. The little loveheart book was for wedding guests to write messages in. Cute :)
The wonderful thing was I was given free licence to be creative which is what I love.
The main icons on the stationary were shoes (of course) little daisies and beautiful colourful swallowtail butterflies. I had already decided to incorporate black into the cake in the form of some rich black velvet ribbon to trim the base of each tier.
And the cake was a rich dark chocolate cake with an orange twist. YUMMY!
So I started by making some little daisies using some lovely silicone moulds I found online.
These were to give a nice slightly 3D stylised effect to the sides, although I also wanted to top the cake with some much larger daisies which I made with a plunger cutter.
I found some little sugar balls that I dusted yellow and glued to the middles with a bit of glitter and sparkle. I like to dry my daisies in a bit of tin foil as a former to give a slightly more irregular shape.:)
Then of course I had to make some shoes!! The main element of the cake afterall. I had such fun making and painting these. Although I made up some of my own designs, I popped in a leopard print shoe for Nadia as requested......and copied some of the designs from the postcard too. The yellow spotty shoe was my favourite. I added texture to the shoes using a craft knife and a cocktail stick for a leathery effect.
The painting required lots of mixing in order to keep the colours bright and rich but not too gaudy. A bit of gold dust added some extra richness.
I was really in my element with this cake and spent the whole day adding little details and textures to the 'sugar shoes'.
Not only did the shoes need to look exotic....but there were fancy butterflies to make too.
And before you think I'm an alcoholic cakeaholic..the gin was for painting on the
food colour!
So after all the little bits and bobs were made it was time to assemble. The fun part!
The daisies were popped to the top of the cake.......
The butterflies and shoes were arranged around the sides.....
And this was the final result!
You could call it a marmite cake....love it or hate it.
It would not generally be viewed as a typical 'Wedding' cake, but it is unique, individual and totally original and bespoke to the Bride.
And I absolutely LOVED creating it! :)
I hope you love it too. Rachelxx
