It is my friend from my knitting groups birthday on Monday and I am making a chocolate fudge cake for her. I am hoping to decorate the top with some knitting but she is also into making jewellery from beads so I was hoping to incorporate some sort of reference to beading too Is there anything that I could use that is edible but looks like beads? Not pearls because my searching has turned plenty of those but she would never use pearls in the jewellery she makes. I cant find anything that looks like regular beads also any ideas on what I could use for string to put with the beads?

Any general advice on the knitting or idea would also be appreciated!

Thanks.

In thinking it depends on what you're actually going to make with your 'beads'. Sanding sugar or cake sparkles might give the impression of seed beads. You could use fondant with a glaze over it to make stone beads, like turquoise. There are gem molds that you could use.

Check out www.makeyourownmolds.com

He has molds for "glass beads" from Marina Sousa. They're really neat. Not sure if you can get them before Monday, but something to look into.

That is really neat. I might have to get one of those someday.

Thanks very much for your replies.

Im thinking of making a little bead box with different compartments and some of the beads spilling onto the cake, so I think the sugar would work well.

When I was looking for suppliers of the sanding sugar/sparkles I came across this site and they have sanding sugar and crystal sugar. What is the difference? Is the crystal sugar a coarser version?
http://www.thecakedecoratingcompany.co.uk/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=sanding+sugar

Thanks for your help!

Their web site wasn't descriptive, was it? When I tried to zoom in, it looked like the crystal sugar was a little more coarse than the sanding sugar. I looked online and the only thing I saw was that sanding sugar is a large crystal sugar. Maybe you can email them and ask if one is a larger grain.

I used to bead a lot. You have me really excited about your cake. You could use the sugars for seed beads, you could make all kinds of stones from fondant, if you have luster dust, you could make pendants and chains. You can also use the fondant for some string, fancy clasps, jump rings, nail heads, all kinds of stuff!

Thanks again. I thought I was the only person who mustn't know the difference between sanding sugar and crystal sugar which is why they didnt explaing but good to know I'm not!

I made a box from flower sugarpaste last night to put the beads in and left it dry overnight, it looks like it is drying well so I'll make more beads, etc over the next few days.

I'll post pics when I finish it!