Capistrano Spring Break

I spent about a week on this cake, a couple of hours every day or so. I started with the gumpaste decorations. All of the flowers and birds are made of gumpaste. I started with white gumpaste for the birds, and painted the detail with gel food color. I also piped some detail onto them with royal icing. I kneaded some red food color into the gumpaste for the red flowers, and then painted them with red food color to give them more vibrant color. To make the archway in the background, I piped melted chocolate onto wax paper in the arch shape. I made the image seen through the arch on a flat piece of gumpaste which I let dry, and then painted with food color. I attached the flowers with royal icing, and "glued" the archway to the gumpaste piece with melted chocolate. I also used melted chocolate to glue the archway to the cakes once they were assembled.
The cake inside is red velvet to match the outside. I covered the cakes with fondant that I gave a red marbled design. The fountain is a small cake which I covered with dark reddish brown fondant. I gave it a brick-like pattern, and made little bricks to go around the top. The water is made from thinned royal icing which I spooned into the pool area, and let drip down the top of the fountain to look like running water. I used fondant balls in the same color as the fountain around the bottom of the cakes to break up the red, and give it a little more depth. All of the piping including the vines, the bird's feet are done with royal icing.
I had a lot of fun with this cake. I love to draw and paint, so I love to bring that into decorating cakes. It gives it much more interesting textures than just plain fondant. Hope you all like it. :)