Would anyone be willing to offer some insight on these two cakes for me? I have a wedding coming up in the end of April that I want to incorporate these two pics into one cake. I have PM'd both designers, but I have had no reply one either one. I am going to use the overall design on the top picture, but the waterfall setting from the other one. How would I do the waterfall setting? and on the other cake-any directions for the palm trees? Also, how can I achieve the "sandy effect". Any suggestions? Thanks!

Okay, I'm not an expert, but I have a couple of ideas:

1. The waterfall looks like fondant that's been airbrushed and/or painted with a piping gell.

2. The sand could be light cookie crumbs or crushed graham crackers.

3. The palm trees could be gum paste or fondant tinted and painted? Sort sort of tootsie roll type candy sculpted? It's even more hard to say now because I can't see the pics as I write this.

Are you asking about design ideas or just "how to" ideas?

Again, I'm no expert, but that's what I would think if I were doing these. Good luck and let us know how it went!

Sarah

The water looks like hand painted fondant (could be spray painted and it has silver luster dust also). The bottom is just wrinkled. The rocks I have done as applied fondant. The palm trees could be fondant covered pretzels with gumpaste dried leaves attached with fondant. The sand could be graham cracker crumbs for pie crust.

I'm going to be doing my version of the bottom cake in June for a graduation, so I practiced the waterfall for my son's bday (cars cake in my pics). All I did was after the tiers are where you want them I just took the fondant and started from the top layer and draped it down to the bottom and kinda scrunched the fondant up a bit. I then dusted it with silver luster dust.

I saw somewhere for the trucks of the palm trees, roll out the fondant into a snake and use scissors to cut at an angle for the texture. I haven't practiced this tip yet to know for sure.

Sorry I can't help much with the sand effect.

HTH

I have used crushed vanilla wafers for sand and loved the color, flavor and texture.

Light brown sugar also works well as sand

I too plan on trying the waterfall, so good luck with it.
Brown sugar works well and dark brown sugar can be used near the edge of the water and will look like wet sand.

I have taken lg. pretzel rods and then wrapped them in a strip of fondant, that gets the layered look of the bark. Then I cut out leaves and "glued" them on top. When the leaves don't want to stick, I will make"coconuts" out of fondant balls and put them underneath the leaves and this helps hold them up.

I recently saw an episode of Cake Challenge and I think it was Gordon ? who used cake scraps for sand. He just spread them out on a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven. Keep checking them and smashing them up to make them crumble.

I made a beach cake and used crushed graham crackers then I sprinkled Gold Sanding Sugar on it to give it the look of sun shining on the sand...subtle reflections. The Gold Sanding Sugar I used is made/distributed by CK Products (Ft. Wayne, IN).