Where's The Cake?

So this past summer I was contacted and asked to make some figurines for the top of a cake by one of our friends who had me do a cake for them previously.  This time she just needed the cake figurines.  Upon further emails back and forth I discovered that she had just gotten engaged and was planning an engagement party for her fiancé and her.  Congrats to them!

As we talked back and forth I learned that she was wanting something that she could keep and was curious if fondant/gumpaste could be preserved.  I was unsure of this but I did tell her that if they were done in clay she definitely could keep them.  So that's what we decided on doing.

The design of the figurines resembled many aspects from her home state in India, Kerala.  I might even had to Google Kerala to get a better feel for how she was describing it. ;)  We can just say this project was very educational. :)  She wanted a figurine to represent her fiancé and her.  He was to be climbing a coconut tree while she was sitting next to it. In my mind when I think of a coconut tree I think of the beach and sand. After researching this area in India I came across pictures of coconut trees in Kerala, nothing like what I was imagining but still beautiful.

Picture taken of Kerala, India

She also wanted the girl to be clothed in a cream colored sari with a gold border which is the traditional sari for Kerala.  He was to wear a mundu (or lungi) in the same colors which is a piece of fabric the men drape around their waist.  Since I had never heard of a mundu she sent me a picture of one to help me better understand what it was.  (I thought it was a cute graphic so I included it here.)

 

So from her descriptions I tried my best to resemble a place I have never been and resemble Indian traditional attire that was I unfamiliar with.  Here is how it all turned out.  I hope I got everything right. :)

 Along with this figurine she wanted me to make something that had a little inside humor.  (I am not sure what the inside joke was on this one but I bet it was a good one.  She wanted me to make a Batman that looked bored who was popping out of the cake. Making something to look like it is popping out of the cake without having the cake to work with was a little challenging but I think I pulled it off ok.  So this is what I came up with:

Getting him to look bored and not mad was a harder task than I thought. :)

These last few pictures are ones with the cake figurines on the cake.  (Thanks for sharing!) You can get a better feel for what the Batman was suppose to look like on the cake. :)