It's all about the Rugby and turning 50

I made this cake last month for a 50th Birthday of a Plymouth Rugby fan. When I first volunteered, I had this image of a rugby ball in my head that turned out to be an American Football and nothing like what an actual rugby ball looks like - this one was a bit more complicated than I initially thought, but it was worth the effort. 

Just for some background information - I used this heraldic symbol as inspiration:

On their website, I found a picture of the below rugby ball, my plan was to simplify it and put it on a cake.

After having baked the cakes, this creation needed some serious shaping to get the rugby ball shape. Cutting away from the top and using another part of a cake for the ends, we were getting somewhere

I then made some butter icing and mixed it with crumbled cake, it filled the gaps and will give a smooth finish to the cake

I then covered the cake in white royal icing and used my smoother to polish it off a bit

Then the tricky part starts - creating the details. Instead of  making the lions on the above picture, because really they are above my abilities - I made a 5 and a 0, I hand cut them and included little lion tails to keep the effect of the heraldic symbol in the above picture. In the middle is the sketch of the coat of arms that I needed to place there to keep the spacing right.

I made the coat of arms by cutting the shield out of grey icing using the sketch I made onto the baking parchment and creating the green cross and miniature castles. I then piped green butter icing onto the board using the multiple hole piping nozzle to give a grass effect.

The grass effect can be seen a little more clearly in the below picture:

After all that piping, I was ready to go back to making the little details. I made some little blue crowns that the lions have around their necks for the 5 and the 0.

I then made another crown for the middle and a claw coming out of the top holding a red anchor, then added the little medallions onto the crowns on the numbers. 

With the detailed part over with, I was able to create some stripes on the ball out of black and red

To finish it off I then made a small white square for a sign and placed a black piece of icing behind it and using the black edible pen, wrote Happy Birthday on the sign. 

Another cake that I was happy with, even if I did have green hands for a few days afterwards.

Total Time Spent: 7.5 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Do more research before volunteering for cakes
Items To Purchase: None
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist - None
Miscellaneous Items Wished For - None

I made this cake shortly after Christmas - one of my gifts was a cake lifter! Very handy - I love it!