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Ruffle Cake, Three Ways

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Erica OBrien in gray cake, gray ruffle cake, mauve cake, pillow cake, ruffle cake, vintage wedding cakes, wedding cake, wedding cake long beach, wedding cake los angeles, wedding cake orange county | 3 Comments
I can never predict when design inspiration will strike, but when it does–in the children’s section at Target, searching the internet for office supplies, driving on the 405 Freeway–I feel compelled to recreate it in cake almost immediately. Next thing I know, I’m racing to my studio to execute the design. Sometimes, but not always, I actually like the result.
Ruffle cakes are usually covered completely in ruffles. Why not, I thought, be more subtle with my ruffles, using them only as an embellishment? The first cake was inspired by the ruffle bibs popular on shirts right now, like this one I saw on Ruffles and Stuff.
The next ruffle cake started off sort of mauve. Note: Shades of purple fondant change and fade rapidly and unpredictably. Whenever I make a cake with any shade of purple, I always do a test strip in advance. (Roll out a small piece of fondant and allow to dry. This will give you a more accurate idea of what your purple-tinted fondant will look.)

I’ve always loved those rocks with words etched on them, and attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to make them out of fondant. (I’ll have to give this another try at some point.) I wanted this ruffle to be vertical, like the ruffles on the pillow below, but it needed something else so I added a ruffled rosette.

I didn’t know it when I created this last cake, but after searching endlessly on the internet for the image that inspired it, I realized that the inspiration actually came from one of my favorite shirts of my daughter’s when she was just born. Although it was a deep green, it had three small horizontal ruffles on the front, just like the top tier in the cake below.
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Cakes Inspired by Imagery

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Erica OBrien in Jose Villa, lavender cake, ruffle cake, sugar magnolia cake, vintage wedding cakes, wedding cake long beach, wedding cake orange county, wedding cake os angeles | 3 Comments

This might surprise you, but I actually don’t like it when a client leaves the cake design completely up to me, giving me the artistic freedom to create whatever I want. I can’t speak for other artists, but I’ve found that this makes it almost impossible since there’s so much that inspires me. When the possibilities are endless–and so is your imagination–the task of narrowing it down and choosing a focus becomes very overwhelming. Instead, I like working within a conceptual framework and using my artistic eye to interpret the design in my style.

Event stylists and even the occasional client often provide an inspiration board–a collection of images intended to convey the mood of the shoot or event–and I find them immensely helpful. (I sometimes create my own  inspiration boards. I’m not a graphic designer, so I copy and paste the images into Microsoft Paint. Someone more skilled would use Photoshop. There’s a board builder on Style Me Pretty, and I think some people are now using Pinterest in lieu of building boards.) Being very visual, working with inspiration boards is my favorite way to design. They usually contain a color palette, and many non-cake photos with prints, patterns, shapes, or other designs for inspiration (hence the name). 
 
Below are several inspiration boards and the cakes they inspired. I would love to see how other cake designers would translate the images into cake. I just think it would be fascinating to see how different artists interpret same thing.
Greco-Roman Wedding (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Vanessa Van Wieren of Alchemy Fine Events. Cake photos by Jill Thomas.
Jose Villa Workshop. Board and styling by Jill La Fleur. Cake photos by Jose Villa.
Lavender Inspired Wedding (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Brooke Keegan. Cake photos by Lane Dittoe.
Steel Magnolias (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Amorology. Cake photos by John Schnack.
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Ruffle Cake

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Erica OBrien in etsy, pillow cake, ruffle cake, wedding cake, wedding cake long beach, wedding cake los angeles | 2 Comments

I get a lot of design inspiration from real-world objects. Combine that with my habit of roaming around aimlessly on the Internet and it seems I was destined to stumble across Etsy. I fall in love with lots of things I see there, like this pillow from PillowPallooza. And while most people who fall in love with a pillow think “I must have that!” my first thought is always “I must make that into a cake!” So I did.

Photo courtesy of Ashleigh Taylor Photography.

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Inspired by Oscar de la Renta

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Erica OBrien in for the baker, for the bride, Hotel Maya, Long Beach CA wedding cake, ruffle cake, succulent cake, wedding cake los angeles | 4 Comments

This photo shoot was inspired by Oscar de la Renta’s Pre-Fall 2010 collection. It’s not so much that I was personally inspired–I’m no fashionista as anyone who knows me (or for that matter sees me) can testify–but rather Megan, the artistic genius behind Honey and Poppies was inspired. I’m kind of into ruffles, so I went with it. (She’s a bad influence on me.) And, I didn’t even argue that Pre-Fall would techinically be summer.

Below, the inspiration board Megan created.

First, I came up with some sketches based on the inspiration board.

Then Megan (frickin Megan) suggested changing it up a bit, so of course I did. (She’s mean.)

Rather than a single cake, I created a collection of cakes, just as fashion designers create seasonal collections. (I guess you could call this my Post-Spring collection, just to sound fancy.) And if that’s not enough, Megan created some pretty amazing cake stands out of flowers.

Monica of Paper Cut Industriesmade the invitations.

The shoot was featured in Utterly Engaged, an online wedding magazine.

We shot at the Hotel Maya in downtown Long Beach, CA. It’s the kind of hotel that makes you think that if you stayed there for only one night you’d be just a little bit cooler than you were before.

Photographs courtesy of T and H Photography. Makeup by Yve Hart. Hair by Live Cut Die.
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