re: Your artistic vision vs. client's budget

I would always work to my budgeted time I allowed myself to do the cake. Anything else is using your own personal time and giving it away for free. Which is fine – if you completely enjoy what you are doing, but my view is that people start to expect gorgeous cakes at low price, just because they have not got the budget. If they were offered a choice of complexity of design and budget – and this was stuck to, then the general public would begin to understand that cake decorators do not work for free. Hairdressers do not, they cannot keep tweaking and touching up a hair design – because there is another lady in the queue awaiting their time. We need to have a more commercial head on if we want to make a business from our craft. If we just want to make a superb cake and not get paid – might as well just enter competitions – and do it all for nothing!! (Just the recognition of winning perhaps!!) Kx