Coach Purse Cake with makeup

Over the 4th of July weekend I got to take a trip to Washington State to visit my family and I was lucky enough to be there for a couple of cakes. This first one I helped Mindy (my sister-in-law) make for her friend. This was a fun cake to make, but even more fun to work with Mindy. I make reference to her every once in a while because she really is the one who inspires me and makes me want to decorate cakes.


Here's a close-up of the details. The cake was a yummy chocolate cake with chocolate frosting covered in homemade fondant. The makeup was fondant mixed with gum paste.


Ok, so there's a little story behind this cake too. It was supposed to be pink with a white handle. Very girly and cute. Well, I didn't want to do a stark white handle so we mixed a little beige into it. Mindy went upstairs to put her baby to bed when I decided it wasn't dark enough so I mixed in some black. Aaaack! I ruined it. It turned a blah gray. Not something you would want on your purse. I got caught when Mindy came back down and we mixed in brown to get the color shown. The red was supposed to be pink, but again, I thought it was too bright (especially since I had already foiled her plans of a pretty pink and white purse) So we mixed in the rest of the brown fondant and ended up with the colors shown. I really like them, but there were a few times during the making of this cake I really thought "I've ruined all Mindy's plans and now she's never going to let me work on a cake with her ever again." But, we worked around everything that was unexpected just like the pros we are and turned a pretty fabulous cake.

Mindy did the compact and seemed to just be able to pull it together without any problem. I on the other hand made the lipstick and had all kinds of trouble seeing how to put it together without it falling apart. Just so you know, It's easiest to make a snake out of the red, wrap 3/4 of it in white, then wrap that in black. We painted the white with edible silver airbrush paint. The compact is held open with 2 safety pins we cut the heads off of and stuck in each side of the compact.