My first grooms' cake. Inspiration came from a cake in an advertisement for Cake Carousel... actually at the back of the Cake Central magazine! I got in touch with Cake Carousel in Dallas to see how they made the boots on top of their cake. Lo and behold! They have a mold. So, I ordered the mold... it was two halves. I have never worked with chocolate molds before, so I just winged it. I didn't have time to perfect the "melting" together of the two halves to form a single solid boot, so I just did two halves. First time, I did solid chocolate. It was TOO heavy for the top of this very moist WASC cake. So, I went back and did the molds again only as a hollow mold and it worked like a charm. I used some edible luster spray on a paint brush and "sponge" painted where I wanted the bronzed, shiny look. I placed toothpicks in the top of th cake to keep the boots from sliding off. For the rope accent, I wanted to draw detail from the bride's cake topper with the "love" knot. I had my husband show me how to tie a square knot like that and went with hemp and tied 8 different knots. Attached them with chocolate buttercream, which the cake is covered with. I know the icing is not smooth... I used too much milk when mixing it, so it wouldn't crust for me to use the Viva method... SO... I thought it looked a little more "rustic" with the imperfections... a look they were going for. What do ya think???