can anyone give me an estimate on how much I need to decorate a 12", 9", 8" and two 6" cakes? The picture the bride showed me had the pearls kinda of cascading down the cake, so they were placed sporadicly around and then looked more like they were piling up at the bottom of the cake. But since she wants ribbon around the base, I'm not doing the pile at the bottom, just the trickling down to the ribbon.

TIA!

Edited to add this picture. This is about what she'd want, but with a few more pearls.

Okay, this is a very rough guess, but maybe 250-300? I made 150 for my sister's wedding cake (6-9-12) and had tons left over. The pearls were 1/4" and were more separated than this cake. Plus it looks like these are much smaller than mine too.

Since you're only cascading and not going around you won't need quite as much.

Thanks so much for your response! It's so hard to guess, but I'd rather have too many than not enough!

If you go to Earlene's Cakes website you want to find the link Cake Serving Chart. Click on it.

Scroll down a bit and column B gives you cake circumferences. Now that cake looks like it has about 1-2 pearls per inch. If she wants more then we can guesstimate that she would like 3-4 pearls per inch.

12-inch = 38 inches
9-inch = 29 inches
8-inch = 25 inches
2x 6-inch = 2x19 inches

When you add all of those up it gives your cake a total circumference of 130 inches. When you multiply that by 4 pearls per inch its about 500-ish pearls. 520 to be exact. Now remember that these pearls wont all be in a line, they will be staggered at different heights, so its possible to put as many as 4-5 pearls per inch of cake and have it still look good.

HTH

Cool! thanks!