
So I received an email from a lovely lady looking for a first Birthday cake for her son, she was very open about design and told me to just take inspiration from the invites, especially the little red fox as her son had a similar toy. I sometimes find it hard when I’m given a totally open brief, but these invites were so cute I just decided to use the lovely illustrated style and do a painted cake.
Invitation Characters
There were some lovely little characters on the stationary so I picked out a few and copied them to the right size. I then used a sharp knife to cut round them onto a piece of rolled out sugar paste.

Then I painted each little character in a water colour style using small bits of black to give them a hand drawn feel.
Animals and Bunting Paint Palette
I chose a couple of foxes, a little squirrel, owl and bunny 🙂 I then did cutouts for some bunting and balloons. I didn’t want the whole cake to look flat so by having some elements in relief it would give it more interest. I’ve got a bit of a thing about paint palettes and seeing all the colours mixed together. This cake had an overall muted palette, not too bright but still colourful.

First I covered the three tiers of cake with the tree details painted directly onto the cake. Wishy washy branches outlined in a darker brown to give the hand drawn effect. With blobs in different shades of green to give the tree a little depth. In close up water colour can look badly done but always stand back from your work and the images will come to life.

I then stencilled the little boys name on the cake to match the font from the invite. I could then fill it in with paint.
Painted Balloons Foxy Topper
I then carefully added all of the elements to the cake adding little painted details like the grass and some flowers. It was all topped off with one of the little foxes wearing a party hat and a hand painted number one. I really really enjoyed making this cake, it was so cute and unique to the party. Right down to the little Birthday cake I made at the base. I hope you like the finished result as much as I did. Rachelx

I love it!