Chevron and Baby Shoes

I would have to say out of the cakes I have done so far this one is one of my favorites.  This cake was ordered for a baby shower by the very first person who ordered a cake from me for her son's 1st birthday party.  (His cake you can see here.) I was so excited to have a repeat customer. 

The instructions for this cake was she wanted gray and white chevron and then accented in black and red because the mother-to-be was a big NC State fan.  So as always I started thinking about what a baby shower cake might have on it and I did a little research online.  I saw where someone did these cute little baby converse shoes and I was hooked.

I actually decided to make all white shoes and then paint on the NC State logo.  After making the white shoes I decided I didn't care for them so I spent the whole next day making another set of shoes which I made red and white. I also decided to not make them look like converse but just regular baby shoes without a logo.  I thought the second pair turned out a whole lot better and I am glad I put in the extra time.  I couldn't quite figure out where I was going to tie in the black until I came up with the idea to make the board it sat on black. 

I thought the chevron pattern would be very simple but once I started cutting the pieces I kept redoing them because I wouldn't like how they looked.  Finally I just gave up, cut them out, didn't worry too much about what they looked like, and put them on the cake.  Standing back looking at the whole picture they turned out looking OK.  Once it all came together I was pretty happy with it.

The shoes really made this cake.  This cake was french vanilla and iced with buttercream.  The shoes were a gumpaste and fondant mixture and the other accent pieces were made out of MMF. (marshmallow fondant)