Ruffle Ribbon Rose Wedding

We were asked to recreate an almost exact copy of a cake from the Pastry Studio.  I have been getting involved with some more FB groups and noticed people saying that you should ask permission before recreating a design that you copy.  I guess in a perfect world with lots of time and super polite people that may happen, but this is not that world.  I'm not going to lie and say that I ask other cake people, wrapping paper designers, or invitation designers for their permission when I draw inspiration from their designs.  I have friends that say they WILL NOT recreate another person's cake or even their own.  I have tried many times to sway a bride to my design but many times they are insistent on a certain cake with NO changes. 

I try to alter it but I can only push so much.  I don't want to lose the sale!  I would if I told them "No, you can't have what you love and dream of."  Does that mean I am an awful thief? I just can't accept that.  If you put your work out there to inspire brides and decorators, you shouldn't be mad when they want it.  I see copies of my stuff all the time, especially in my local area.  What I hate is when a local competitor knows your price for your cake and tries to undercut you to get the order, but that's a whole other topic.  I make sure to verbalize and have in my contract that my work will differ from another baker even when I'm trying to be exact.  I still feel guilty about using someone else's design and I won't be using these types of cakes on my new updated website in the future.

Please weigh in and feel free to tell me your thoughts on the matter.  We can have varying opinions and still be friends, right?

Sketchy Cake Designs

Click to Enlarge Image

When most everything you make is a custom design, you have to make a lot of sketches.  The only thing I like about recreating an exact copy of a cake is that I don't have to draw it out.  I can decorate cakes, I can't draw :(  My art teacher in high school told me that most people that are great artists, whether drawing, painting or sculpting, don't just wake up great.  She said that for 98% of artists, it's a skill that you learn over time.  I really don't think that occurred to me until then.  Now I know that it is true in most everything we do.  Things that used to take me forever are now easier.  I'm still pretty pitiful at sketching cake designs though.

Customers have to see a sketch of what they are getting because most people can't visualize all the things they are hearing.  It helps me too!  I can see the general idea and make changes when booking the cake instead of the day I'm decorating it.  The better the sketch, the easier it is for someone to "see" it.  Also, it helps bakers to come across as professional or not so much.  It is something we have to do, so we'd better get used to it!

Click to Enlarge  Image

Currently, I have PowerPoint templates that I've made and I "draw" on those.  If I can color them in the program, or use clip art, it does help a little, but it's still not at all realistic.  I've been trying the Tiered Caker iPad app and printing those out to draw on.  I really like the realism that they show, but I can't do "weird" things in the program, like adding a skull tier or flowers as a separators.  Also, when I'm just trying to show texture or white on white decorations, I have to pencil them in and that makes it very hard for them to visualize the final cake.

I'm including two of my current sketches so that you can "grade" me and tell what you think I could do differently.  I recently watched a CakeFu by the awesome Liz Marek about digital cake sketching.  She has lots of video's and even a Facebook page for Cake Sketching.  I really like what she does and I wish I had that kind of time just to make a sketch.  She said that it can easily take an hour per sketch.  Like I said, I want to be able to do that, but it just doesn't seem to be practical.  Am I just whining and need to get over it?  I'm clearly not going to be able to draw it free hand, so something has to give.  Keep in mind, these sketches aren't "bad" ones!  Thanks so much for your input!

Edible Feather Tutorial

 

My friend Kimberly told me a while about that she had made peacock feathers using wafer paper.  I was intrigued, so I immediately ordered a package.  And there it sat, for months and months, until I finally needed to make my Gatsby inspired cake for the recent photo shoot we did.  It was so easy to make I thought I would share with you my loyal readers.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

1.  Wafer Paper
2.  Picture of your feather
3.  Parchment paper (for tracing)
4.  Marker
5.  Scissors, Exacto knife, or Razor blade
6.  Cutting board or surface
7.  White wire
8.  Tylose glue / Sassie Sap Glue

The first thing we need to do is get our feather pattern.  I used this image and enlarged it to the size I wanted on my iPad.  Then I put my parchment paper over it and traced the basic shape of the feather with my marker.

Now that we have an image to cut, just place your wafer paper over the parchment paper.  You can see right through it!  Just cut it gently with your Exacto knife on the cutting board.  The wafer paper cuts easily and with a light hand you won't even cut through the parchment paper.

Pop out your feather and place it back on the cutting board.

Don't draw on YOUR feather!

I made these lines on the wafer paper with a pen, but these are for illustration purposes only.  These lines just represent how you will cut the blades of the feather.

These spring loaded sewing scissors work pretty well, they make tiny cuts, but I found it a little hard to get the cuts deep enough into the feather.

A very sharp Exacto knife goes more quickly and allows you to vary your cuts.  Keep cutting the blades of the feather until your done with both sides.  If you get a couple of jagged edges, it's OK - it's a bird feather!

Now it's time to ruffle some feathers!  Just thumb through the blades to separate them a little.  More if you really want a rustic look!

Now your feather is almost finished!  To put on the cake I used some white wire to go the length of the feather (with some left over to insert) and I adhered it with a little Sassie Sap sugar glue or some tylose glue.

If you enjoyed the tutorial, leave me a comment here and let me know - and don't forget to stop back in next week!

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, I receive a small commission if you buy a product from the links on my blog.  I actually own the products I recommend and all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Banjo Cake Armature Design

Last week I showed you guys the awesome banjo cake I made for Rachel and Daniel's wedding.  They were thrilled with the cake; I even heard from the bridal planner that they wouldn't allow the cake to be cut!  They took the whole thing home with them without a scratch on it!  That's the way I like to think all my cakes go over.  I HATE seeing pictures of my cakes after they have been fed upon!!

Anyhoo, back to the design of  banjo armature.  I wanted this cake to look as much like a banjo as possible and as little like a cake as possible.  Even though it would mean more inedible pieces, I wanted the neck to be "floating", I wanted to use real guitar strings, and I didn't want a visible cake board.

In the picture above, I have removed the neck from the armature and screwed 6 small eye screws into the bottom of the banjo.  These will hold the strings.  The bottom cake is om the armature.  I included the thickness of the cake board into my design so that the banjo would keep it's scale and since it was the same size as the cake (14"), you would never know there was a cake board.  Even though the cake actually only measures 1.25 inches thick, I decided to put in some supports because I didn't want ANY shifting or sinking.  The cake above has it's basic decoration already done, which was a block modeling chocolate top with a wood grain modeling chocolate wrap around the sides.

This is the 2nd tier of the banjo, which is a 12 " cake.  It is sitting on a very thin cardboard round.  I cut out the holes for the armature.  Once it was on the cake I had to fill in the bottom with just a smidge of modeling chocolate to fully round out the bottom.  From there, it got a similar coating as the bottom tier.  White on the top with a gray wrap around the sides.  The neck could then be attached and then the details could be added.  Here's one more shot of the completed cake, just in case you missed it last week!

Have a great week!

Content Theft vs Design Theft

Sometime late last year, I found another blogger that had literally taken dozens of my posts - text, pictures, and all, and posted them on her blog as her own.  I found each post and left a nasty little comment and asked her to take down the stolen content.  Nothing ever happened and not knowing where to go or what to do, I let it go.

Over the weekend, Chaddy found a group on Facebook called Stop the Cake Thief.  It's a group where you can "out" these unscrupulous people that would take another's cake pictures and present them as their own.

He still had the link to the blog, so he decided to list it on the group so that others might see if their content had been stolen too.  Within a day or two, a few people commented that they recognized some cakes.  But then someone commented that not only had someone stolen her cake but that someone else had stolen it again by claiming it as their own!  And the claimer was me!!  It was the first time I had been accused of doing something un-cake-ethical.  The other decorator was accusing us of design theft.  Chad looked at the 2 photos and while they were entirely different cakes, one was definitely inspired by the other.  Chad quickly worked things out with the lady and wound up giving her a shout out on the post thanking her for the inspiration.

Anytime my family sees a cute cake, they send me a picture.  Not to mention that I get e-mails and printed pictures from clients every week of cakes they like that will inspire their own cake.  If a client is looking for cake ideas, I generally direct them to flickr.  They never provide me with the original baker (or the price!).  I'm absolutely sure this is where this lady's cake came from.

If I know who did the original cake, I like to give them credit, but as I stated before, I usually don't know.  If another baker does a cake that I came up with originally, it really doesn't bother me.  Odds are, you aren't near enough to me to be a competitor, and if you are and can do the cake better, more power to you!

I think there's a huge difference between design theft and content theft, and to be clear, Stop the Cake Thieves focuses solely on photo/content theft, not design theft.  But I do have a renewed sensitivity to it and I will try harder to give proper credit when and where I can.

Have any of you ever had your actual photos stolen and presented as your own?
 
What are your thoughts on people using one of your cakes as inspiration for their own?

For the record, I got the graphic above from iStockPhoto.