Art Deco 40th Birthday

I just love when my client's give me carte blanche to create a cake design for their special event. It really gives me such confidence that my client trusts my artistry and design conceptualization.  My client wanted a Gatsby inspired Art Deco cake with black/gold/white to celebration her husband's 40th birthday.  I wanted to give the cake a masculine feel but also capture the strong angular and geometric lines most associated with the art deco movement but I wanted a unique twist to it.  So I googled "art deco pattern" and came across this artist's pattern which I fell in love with.

It inspired me immediately to create a similar pattern on the cake and make it the focal point of the design.  To do that, I know I needed a double tier so that I can blow up the design to give a dramatic effect.  A double tier is two cake tiers of the same diameter placed directly on top of eachother and covered in fondant as if it were one large tier.  There is a piece of cardboard between the two cakes so it cuts like two cakes but looks like one - great illusion!  We cake artists are magicians too - ha ha! From there, the rest of the design fell into place - I knew I wanted some texture so I put gold sequins on the bottom tier. And I knew I wanted some curves to balance out the rigid strong lines of the center pattern so scallops were perfect for that.

Top tier:  This is a popular scallop pattern which I achieved by using Marvelous Molds.  They are fantastic and fool proof - I just love using them.  I used white fondant and painted it gold with gold highlighter dust and everclear.  The monogram and the 40 topper are Art Deco fonts printed on frosting paper and adhered to fondant which I let dry for several days.  My sketch showed a cut out 40 but I ended up changing that because I really wanted to keep the lines very crisp and I wanted it to match the font of the monogram which as you can see is kind of hard to cut out freehanded.

Middle Tier: The semi circle and lines were applied to the cake using the wax paper transfer method by Jessica Harris.  I precut the front diamonds and let them dry several days to make sure they were rigid and then applied them using royal icing.

Bottom tier:  the cake is covered in white fondant. I used piping gel to adhere pastel confetti sprinkles to the surface of the cake. After letting it dry, I painted it with gold dust and everclear which evaporates in seconds.

I am still swooning over this design and my client, her husband, and guests all enjoyed it very much.  That means so much to me!