Cake Decorating - The Purse Cake with shoes

I did my first paid cake this past weekend. Yay! I was given carte blanche with it too which made it even better. It was for the 21st birthday of a lovely young woman that I know through work. I don't know her very well but know her enough to know that she loves shoes, bags, make up and the like so I decided to do a purse cake with a pair of shoes and some make up for decoration. I had wanted to make a pair of sunglasses too, but I couldn't find a template to use.

I purchased some midnight black fondant online, since it is so hard to colour your own black. I had a large amount of pink fondant left over from the carousel cake so I added some violet colour paste to turn it a lovely shade of purple. I added gum tragacanth to some of the black and purple fondant so that I could make the decorations. After waiting 24 hours for it to start to work I spent a lovely afternoon making a pair of shoes, mascara, lipstick, eye shadow palette, buckle & handle for the purse and flowers for decoration. 

I made 2 x 23 cm square chocolate cakes using my perfect decorating cake. I trimmed each cake and cut them in half (to make 4 loaf-sized cakes) and stacked them filling each layer with ganache. I then trimmed the whole thing again creating an angle on the front. This was then covered with ganache and left to set overnight. Finally it was covered with fondant, black on the front with purple on the sides back and creating a flap on the front. Unfortunately, the handle that I made had not dried for long enough and collapsed when I placed it on the cake so I made a new one. At first I tried to drape it, but it started stretching so I just sat it on top of the bag. The flower decorations were stuck on the shoes and bag. An embossing tool was used to get the stitching detail. 

It was such a fun thing to do. I just loved the whole process right from planning and searching flickr for ideas to the making and decorating. The birthday girl just loved the cake too however she did not cut it at her party on Saturday night but waiting until her actual birthday yesterday. It has also given me another possible 21st cake to do for an Enchanted Forest themed party...I hope I get the job.