Violets on a Cake

I made this cake for one of my friends in work, it was her Grandma's 90th Birthday. It was quite a challenge as I have never actually made flowers out of sugar modelling paste before (and I do not want to for quite some time after this cake!)

The Project: 90th Birthday Cake
The Theme: Violets
Ingredients:
For the Cake
16oz Self Raising Flour
16oz Sugar
16oz Margarine
8 Eggs
For the Icing
Butter Icing and Jam for the middle
One pack of purple sugar modelling paste
2 packs of white royal icing
Yellow Dusting
Purple Dusting
Small amounts of yellow royal icing
Purple ribbon

The part that scared me the most about making this cake, were the flowers. I had to start with them first to ensure that they were dry enough to place on the cake

I needed the modelling paste to work it into a play dough like consistency, making it easier to work with. I rolled out a very thin section and cut 5 petals out of it

Once they were cut out, the petals were weaved in between each other and placed on a spoon to raise the edges of the petals, giving the flower a raised, more realistic look.

Using one of my tools that I actually had free from a cake decorating magazine, I pushed down on the middle, creating a dip in the middle of the flower

I dipped a paintbrush, that is reserved especially for cake situations, in a pot of yellow powder and dusted the middle of the violet.

Using another brush that is also reserved for cake situations, I dusted the edges of the violet with a darker purple, which helped give each flower depth. 

Each flower was left to dry out whilst I made the rest of the cake. 
I made two 8oz cakes, both square and both plain sponge. 

I iced the middle with Jam and butter icing and coated the outside of the cake lightly with Jam to ensure that the royal icing would stick to the cake. I coated the cake and made the plaque for the Happy Birthday writing to go on later. 

I checked on the flowers (which had actually been left overnight), and all seemed fine, I added two little balls of yellow royal icing to the middle of the flowers and they were ready to attach to the cake

Before sticking them down, I tied the ribbon around the cake, I wanted to avoid knocking flowers off later, so getting it over and done at this stage, seemed like the best idea. 
Using edible glue (which is one of the best inventions ever created, I might add), I stuck the flowers into place. There were a few catastrophes, some were dropped, some crumbled, some simply didn't make the cut, but I was happy with the results.

Now the only things left to do was to attach the bow and write on the plaque.

Whilst fiddling around to get the right look for the bow, I realised that I actually had no colouring for the icing. A quick trip to Hobbycraft and some self restraint from buying anything else in the shop other than what I needed, and I was back in my kitchen preparing the icing. 

Now, I owe a quick Thank You to someone here, by their recommendation I gave the paste a go. As you all know, I've struggled to find some good strong colouring. So Michelle, thank you very much for the recommendation, it worked like a charm! :)

Here's the finished result:

Overall I think it went quite well for my first attempt at flowers. I was quite pleased with it. But I'm not going to be volunteering to do many cakes that involve flowers. There were literal nightmares involved with this cake, which included me actually waking up from a dream in which I was told that they actually wanted daffodils. Over the years I'm sure I'll make more, but I hope it's not for a while!

Total Time Spent: 7 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Creating flowers out of Sugar Modelling Paste
Kitchen Items to Purchase: Flower cutters if I ever do flowers again
Items added to Amazon Wishlist: Icing Smoother
Miscellaneous Items Wished for: New icing piping bag or tube, mine split whilst finishing off the writing