Happy New Year everyone!! This is my first cake of 2015…

Made this for my brother-in-law’s milestone 45th birthday this past weekend. I wanted to practice the gumpaste poppy I recently watched on James Roselle’s Craftsy class and wanted to try my hand at a bit of hand painting too. So when I saw an abstract poppy painting (see last pic) while shopping the other day, a perfect design that married the two ideas popped into my head.

The bottom tier is a replica of the painting and it is my first attempt at any kind of actual painting on a cake. I decided to use buttercream so that I could mimic the textured paint-laden feel of the art piece I saw. It is buttercream painted ON a buttercream iced tier. I chilled the bottom tier well, before painting and would pop it back in the fridge between layers or colours.

I topped the cake with a gumpaste poppy to contrast with the 2D nature of the painted tier. The veiner and flower formers I ordered for the gumpaste version did not arrive in time but I was able to use a bit of innovative thinking to get the petals to look at least halfway decent. I made my own perfectly shaped formers out of aluminum foil and veined the petals by hand using the veining tool.

It is far from perfect but I was pretty happy with the overall effect of the 2D/3D mix techniques and am SO relieved it at least looked like the painting that inspired it haha!

Hope everyone is having a great year New Year so far and TFL!!