This month I am taking part in the March Meet The Maker challenge on instagram. Each day is a new prompt inspired by ‘Your 2020 Business Story’. Here are my first few posts:
STORY
I shared the story of my grey ombré wedding cake design in my blog post here. From how the design almost didn’t happen, the meaning behind the design, how it went viral and sparked a trend for grey wedding cakes and how it went on to be featured by @prestonrbailey @thecakeblog and @neighbours.
HANDS AT WORK
Here are my hands at work, painting watercolour lavender flowers, making sugar flowers and assembling everything together on the cake.
I have a full FREE tutorial for this watercolour wedding cake available below and you can find my simple wax flower tutorial here.
TIME
One of the questions I am asked the most when meeting with clients is How long does it take to make a wedding cake? This is one of the most difficult questions to answer because each wedding cake is so different.
I think it is easy for people to underestimate the amount of time that goes into making a wedding cake. So much goes into making a luxury wedding cake, from designing the cake, ordering and purchasing any special equipment/ ingredients, baking, making and preparing fillings, torting, fillings and ganache, covering in sugar paste, ensuring a smooth finish and sharp edges- and this is all before the decorating even starts!
The sugar flowers in the cake pictured below were all made to tie in with the fresh flowers being used in the wedding and the colours that were being incorporated throughout the wedding.
The freesia sprays take approximately 1 hour per spray. In the image below you can see the freesia sugar flowers before assembly. Each flower is individually made from flower paste which is custom coloured, attached to wire and then brushed with petal dusts, before taping together. The ranunculus are constructed with 50+ petals per flower, before being brushed with petal dusts. The sugar roses were made in 3 different sizes and shades, the sugar leaves are all individually wired so that they can be placed at different angles throughout the arrangement and the gypsophila have floral tape applied to each individual stem.
Overall the sugar flowers on this wedding cake alone are over 10+ hours of work. Sugar flowers are definitely a labour of love but also one of my favourite thing to make!
CLOSE UP
A close up of a sugar rose ready for dusting with petal dust.
LOVE TO MAKE
My absolute favourite thing to make is sugar roses!
I hope you enjoyed reading my first few posts of the March Meet the Maker challenge. Make sure to follow along with the rest of the challenge over on instagram by searching the hashtag #marchmeetthemaker to see all the posts from the amazing community of makers taking part.
