This cake was for Sam. It was really important to me that the cake meant something to her and that theme has continued in all my cakes. I went and spent some time in her room and made notes, drew the layout and the bedspread, and took some time to see what things were important to her - obviously her love of cats, hockey, the teddy on her bed, and her family (represented in the photos on the bedside table).
I carried on for the next few years just making cakes for special occasions for my family and friends.
Someone at work saw some photos of my cakes and asked if I would make her wedding cake. She didn't want a traditional cake, but one which was more personal. That was my first ever commission!
I talked it over with her and the cake was based on the house that she lived in with her fiance.
As before, I did some research and made sure that the details on the house were pretty accurate. The cake included figures of the bride and groom and their three labrador dogs. Each tile on the roof was made individually! I started to learn about the different kinds of sugar-paste that were available.
More family cakes followed in the following years - a make-up box for my sister, a caravan and an artist's easel for my mum's 60th, and in the meantime I passed a GCSE in Textile Art, a City and Guilds foundation diploma in art and design, and went on to take a City and Guilds in Embroidery, so although I wasn't doing much on the cake front, I was honing my skills in other areas of art and design.
I made this cake for my Uncle Ken's 70th Birthday :
Note the cat poo - the bane of his life!
Following that I got my first ever commission from someone I didn't know, who had seen my Uncle's gardening cake and wanted something similar for their Ruby Wedding Anniversary :
I can see looking back at these cakes that although my figures have become more refined, they are still basically the same and have the attention to detail that I still try to include - earrings, soles of shoes, all their fingers and toes, and in the case of the chickens, bottoms!
