2D 1st place
Under My Bed
by Megan Matsumoto · submitted Dec 4, 2016 · 2016 contest
1 / 41
Description
Wow. I can’t believe this is my 7th Threadless competition! For 7 years in a row I have had the pleasure to take an amazing piece of artwork and do my best to transform it into a cake. Every competition has been challenging and fun, and this year was no exception.
I basically have my process down to a science now. I started by skimming through the thousands of designs and eventually narrowing it down to designs I thought would be decently intricate and detailed, but would also translate well into a cake. I eventually settled on “Under My Bed” because it looked really fun and whimsical. Like I’ve done with my past cakes, I decided to take creative license and add more color to the design. I did a quick colored version in Photoshop to see how it’d look, then I just dived in and started forming the monsters out of fondant. Usually I make most of the cake out of plain white fondant and then I paint everything, but for this cake I colored each piece of fondant and then shaped it, which took a lot of time.
I started from the top of the design and worked my way down, making sure each piece fit together correctly. After making all the main body parts, I then went back and added all the smaller details like eyeballs, eyebrows, glasses, teeth and anything that needed to be painted.
I didn’t have time to get fancy, so I baked a simple vanilla cake and coated it in vanilla Italian meringue buttercream. I covered the cake and board with fondant, and then basically transferred all the completed fondant pieces onto the top of the cake. Despite how fragile some of the pieces were, like the cobwebs which were made out of extremely thin strips of gumpaste, almost nothing broke during the transferring process, so I had very little repair work to do. And just like that, I was done, and it was then picture time and then cake cutting time.
The cake took about a week and a half from start to finish, and that was pretty fast for me. I worked on the fondant monsters every day before and after work so I don’t know how much time it took in total, but there were definitely many hours spent on those intricate pieces. The cake is completely edible and I only used fondant, gumpaste and food coloring for the design.
All in all it was another successful Threadcakes cake and I’m so happy to be able to enter my 7th competition. This is something I always look forward to every year, so thank you Chris for running this awesome contest! As always, it was a fun, challenging and tasty experience and I’m excited to add yet another Threadcakes cake to my portfolio. :)
I basically have my process down to a science now. I started by skimming through the thousands of designs and eventually narrowing it down to designs I thought would be decently intricate and detailed, but would also translate well into a cake. I eventually settled on “Under My Bed” because it looked really fun and whimsical. Like I’ve done with my past cakes, I decided to take creative license and add more color to the design. I did a quick colored version in Photoshop to see how it’d look, then I just dived in and started forming the monsters out of fondant. Usually I make most of the cake out of plain white fondant and then I paint everything, but for this cake I colored each piece of fondant and then shaped it, which took a lot of time.
I started from the top of the design and worked my way down, making sure each piece fit together correctly. After making all the main body parts, I then went back and added all the smaller details like eyeballs, eyebrows, glasses, teeth and anything that needed to be painted.
I didn’t have time to get fancy, so I baked a simple vanilla cake and coated it in vanilla Italian meringue buttercream. I covered the cake and board with fondant, and then basically transferred all the completed fondant pieces onto the top of the cake. Despite how fragile some of the pieces were, like the cobwebs which were made out of extremely thin strips of gumpaste, almost nothing broke during the transferring process, so I had very little repair work to do. And just like that, I was done, and it was then picture time and then cake cutting time.
The cake took about a week and a half from start to finish, and that was pretty fast for me. I worked on the fondant monsters every day before and after work so I don’t know how much time it took in total, but there were definitely many hours spent on those intricate pieces. The cake is completely edible and I only used fondant, gumpaste and food coloring for the design.
All in all it was another successful Threadcakes cake and I’m so happy to be able to enter my 7th competition. This is something I always look forward to every year, so thank you Chris for running this awesome contest! As always, it was a fun, challenging and tasty experience and I’m excited to add yet another Threadcakes cake to my portfolio. :)
