Alice in Wonderland

Hello there! I'm enjoying a nice chilly day here in the north, all snuggled up inside and sipping some hot cocoa. I've been working on my computer and trying to organize and back up photos and realize I have a LOT of them I haven't shared on here. I must remedy that. I think I will start with these photos of my nephew's wedding back in May, mostly because the finished pictures were taken outside with lots of warm sunshine. ;o)

My nephew and his lovely bride were having a themed wedding, and in case you didn't figure it out from the title of this post, it was an Alice in Wonderland theme. My head was about to explode with all the different ideas going on in there. So many fun things in that story to re-enact on a cake; the Mad Hatter, rabbits, playing cards, flowers, tea cups and pots, roses, etc. Did I mention they wanted 200 cupcakes to go with the main cake? That's a lot of modeling chocolate fun right there!

I actually took several in-progress shots for this cake because I worked on it over quite a long time. My nephew doesn't live near me, in fact he lives several states away so I knew I was going to have to ship something there as I wouldn't be able to transport it all on the plane and it needed extra time to get there. I couldn't ship my tools since I would need them, so that meant shipping the cupcake toppers. I've seen other decorators that sell their cupcake toppers online and ship them. I've shipped an Elsa and Olaf topper and didn't have too much trouble, I thought these wouldn't be too bad. I thought wrong. ;o( More on that later.

Here's the beginning of my tea pot.

Not too bad, but I wish I'd spent more time with the royal frosting undercoat to smooth out the rice crispy bumps better.

Here's the gumpaste tea cup to go with the tea pot. 

Here's some of the little details I was able to make ahead. Loved the door knob. 

Bunny butt! Sorry, that's just too fun to say. ;o) Did you notice my "butter"fly?

Here are some of the cupcake toppers before I mailed them off. Everything is made from modeling chocolate.

Here's some more. Unfortunately, they didn't look like this when they arrived. They looked more like a pile of green and white confetti. The watches and keys arrived fine, but I spent a frantic day recreating hats and roses.

 Here's the items I took as a carry-on on the plane. They arrived just fine. :o)

 Here are the toppers on their cupcakes. Drink Me bottles...

 hats...

 keys...

 flowers with faces...

 pocket watches...

 and roses. The idea in my head didn't look this gruesome though. Does anyone else see blood instead of paint? Yuck!

And here's the main cake all put together.

 Unfortunately I didn't get any super great shots of the cake before it was set up outside. While outside lighting can make for some great photos, the dinner buffet in the background didn't make such a great backdrop for it.

 Here's a few close-ups. This cake really had a LOT of stuff going on. You couldn't get it all in one photo. Here's the teacup, butterfly, Cheshire cat, part of the door knob, some of the singing flowers, and you can just see the "drink me" bottle behind the teacup.

Here's some more of the flowers, a playing card with his can of paint, and oh look, a bunny butt! Sorry. I couldn't help myself. Tee-hee. Now the roses on here don't look quite as gruesome as the ones of the cupcakes did. 

 And, the precarious teapot with still more flowers and the pocket watch.

All-in-all this was a really fun cake to make. A lot of time and work, a lot of things I would do differently next time, but a lot of fun too, and I'm so glad I was able to do this as a gift to my nephew and his new bride.

It looks like my mug is empty. Time to go get a refill. I will try and get on here next week and share another cake or two with you.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!