A Stunning Wedding in July

I was asked a while ago (I think in January) by a friend of mine if I could do her wedding cake.  I of course said 'yes', I love doing wedding cakes!  We talked extensively via email, and as the day drew nearer, we met in person to go over flowers, colors, etc....  I brought some of my flowers to show her and we decided on the type of flowers (dendrobium orchids and tea cup roses) and the colors (teal-ish orchids and pink-ish roses).

So, I set about making the flowers.  The dendrobium orchids weren't so bad, I had the cutters for them and made the flowers.

I also made the tea cup roses, but unfortunately didn't take any pictures of them, lol.  I ended up using a wire with a floral tape bud on the end of it and the smallest 5 petal cutter in the PME cutter set.  Next time, I would use a slightly larger floral tape bud than the one that I used, but they turned out gorgeous!

After they were all dry, I dusted them.  The orchids were dusted on the edges with a teal blue, and the roses with a pale pink.







Here's a close up of the top of the cake - you can see the dusted tea cup roses and dendrobium orchids:

I taped the flowers into a long lei-type vine and draped them around the cake, starting at the top.  There were also smaller accent cakes that went with the big one.  Those got a small spray of one orchid and one tea cup rose.  For the sprays, I used some white and teal 1/8" ribbon and made some cute loops and taped them with the flowers.

Here is one of the smaller accent cakes:

The main cake was three layers, with alternating ribbon patterns around the bottom of the cakes.  The bride requested real ribbon, so that's what I used.  I took the color sample with me to the craft store, and luckily found the right color first shot!

I had wanted to elevate the main wedding cake and kind of have the accent cakes almost "under" the main cake.  I started thinking on how I could do that.  I ended up taking two 10" styrofoam round cake dummies, taped them together to get a height of 8".  I then draped some white satin material over them, followed by some sparkly teal fabric that I happened to have laying around the house (amazing, isn't it?  lol).

Here are some pictures of the finished cake and table all set up:

Let me tell you....as a cake decorator....it's pretty tough to impress yourself with a cake you've done.  Believe when I say, I finished the cake table, put my stuff away and grabbed my camera.  I turned around to take a picture and was absolutely STUNNED at how gorgeous the cake and table looked!

The last two pictures (and the one of the top of the cake earlier in the post) were sent to me by the bride.  It was so bright outside that day, that my camera just didn't take very nice pictures.  In her email with the pictures she also thanked me.  With her permission I am sharing what she wrote.  It just makes me, as a cake decorator, love what I do so much more when I get thanks like this from someone!

Thank you so much for everything you did! The cake was PERFECT! And there wasn't a single complaint from the peanut gallery. The fondant, icing, and all the cakes tasted fantastic! It was so pretty, I just couldn't have pictured it differently. If you didn't know the flowers were sugar, you wouldn't be able to tell till you touched them. Unbelievable.

So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you thank you thank you so much for everything.

 ~Chelle

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

When you hear the words "Mother's Day" in conjunction with 'cake', if evoked images of flowery cakes and whatnot (at least it does to me).  Well, I asked my mom what kind of cake and decorating she'd like for Mother's Day.  She is a very easy person to please most of the time.  Her absolute favorite cake in the entire world is a yellow cake mix (undoctored) with Betty Crocker Milk Chocolate frosting on it.

Well...........how can you NOT give your mom what she wants for Mother's Day?!?!?!?!?!

Here's her cake!

She love it, and that's all that matters!  (even though, secretly, it KILLED me to frost with canned frosting!)

~Chelle

Christening Dresses

One of my best friends had her daughter's Christening in June.  She asked if I would make her cake, and I of course said yes!  I was also asked to be her Godmother!  I am sooooo excited!!!!

We talked about cake ideas, and settled on one that looked like her Christening dress.  I baked sheet cakes for the basic dress, then carved the cakes to get a dress shape.  The cake was white cake with a raspberry filling.  I mixed Polaner All Fruit Raspberry into my regular buttercream recipe for the filling - it was sooooooooo delicious!!!!!!!!!

I put the cake together, covered it in fondant and dusted to look like the dress.  It needed something else, so I added some of my leftover flowers from a previous competition to the cake.  They were just what it needed!

Here are pictures of the finished cake:

~Chelle

Ahoy Matey!!!!!!!

I was asked to do a Pirate-themed birthday cake....a pirate ship if I could swing it.  So...I went off to iParty to see what type of pirate-y things they had (Yes, I think I made up a word there, lol).  I found a package of pirate things (skeletons, cannons, treasure box, barrells, etc..) and also some individual pirates.  So I bought an assortment and headed home.

I ended up using the small oval Wilton pans for the ship, since it did not need to feed a lot of people.  I baked, cooled and stacked the cake, then cut/carved them into a ship shape.  Buttercream was requested (rather than fondant), so I did an interpretation of the basket weave method of piping.  I then placed the pirate items around the ship.  Since pirate ships don't reside on land, I colored some piping get blue and spread it around the cake to resemble water.  I put some skeletons in the water, as well as a rowboat with the treasure in it!

The recipient LOVED the cake!!!!  Here are some pictures of the finished cake:

~Chelle

Flower Cupcakes

Since we did not attend the baby shower for our friend's daughter, we decided to throw a small "Grandma Shower" for our friend.  We had been meeting pretty regularly for lunches, so for one of them, we decided it would be a shower, lol.

Rather than make a cake for only 5 of us, I decided instead to do some cupcakes.  I used purple and piped a generic flower on it, and then piped some leaves on it.   I found some cute basket-type cupcake papers at a local cake store.  The handles didn't really end up looking that nice, so I just used the wrapper part.

~Chelle

Baby Shower "Cake"

Did you notice the "" around the word Cake in the title?   Well......there's a very good reason for that.  CakeCrazy and I decided to surprise our friend and show up the morning of the baby shower to help set up and everything.  We knew if we told her, she'd tell us not to come to help.  So, we decided to just show up, lol.

We didn't want to show up empty-handed, and wanted to get something for the mom-to-be.

We decided....since we are cake artists, why not a Diaper Cake!

We went out shopping to get the necessary supplies, then headed back to Cake Crazy's house to put it together.

We first had rolled all the diapers into cylinders, and held them together with hair elastics:

We then used a bottle as the center and 41 diapers surrounding it to make up the bottom layer.  The middle layer consisted of 21 diapers and the top layer had 7 diapers around another bottle.

Cake Crazy had some plastic trays, and I had some tuk-n-ruffle (stop gagging! lol), so we created a pretty plate to put the diaper cake on:

We tried to be create with the items we had purchased.  For instance....Cake crazy figured out how to fold and roll some socks into roses and green ribbon into leaves!

Here is the final cake that we came up with:

~Chelle

Baby Shower Corsages

A good friend (we'll call her CakeCrazy) and I have a friend that was throwing a baby shower for her daughter.  We offered to help with whatever she needed, and I was asked to make some corsages for the mom-to-be and the grandmothers.

She didn't really have a preference of flowers, and since I had some leftover roses and hydrangeas, I asked if those would be fine.  She said sure!  She did say the color theme was purple - the mom-to-be doesn't like pink. 

So, I went home, dug out the roses and hydrangeas and all of my purple dusting colors.

I know it looks like a lot, but after taking a wonderfully fabulous dusting class from Ruth Rickey I have learned the magic secret to getting lifelike colored flowers (hint: layering!)  So, I started with pale blue hydrangeas (hey, it's what I had, lol!), and layered on each purple color, using the darkest on only the edges.

Here's the progression of colors at each stage:

I also used some of the paler shades and dusted the rose a pale lavendar.  I had some purple toulle I found, as well as some purple gingham ribbon and a fabulous sparkly purple butterfly that CakeCrazy gave me to use!  I put them all together and came up with this:

I was nice, but it still needed something.  I send the picture to Cake Crazy and gave her a call to toss around some ideas.  Her first suggestion was it needed green.  She had also given me a baby items mold, and we thought that a few of those items would look cute sticking out the top of the corsage.  So, I went ahead and followed her suggestions.

I had some leaves that were leftover, so I dusted them (yes, multiple shades of greens and other colors) and put them together with the flowers.  I also made some baby booties and baby bottles and added those to the corsages:

Now they looked fabulous!!!!!!!!

Here's a close-up of the flowers:

Here's a close-up of the baby items and leaves:

Finally, here are all three together:

Our friend did not see them until they were all completed.  She absolutely loved them!!!   That's the best compliment a cake/sugar artist can ask for!

~Chelle

Armed Forces Day

Here is the post you've all been eagerly waiting for!!!!   Pictures of the finished cake that I entered at the Great American Cake Show in Westminster Maryland back in the beginning of May.

The cake was not assembled prior to transporting it to Maryland.  Not because I didn't think it would make it, but rather because I ran out of time, lol!  Also because I suck at arranging flowers, and needed the advice of some good friends that were at the show with me.

So..........without further ado, here it is, in all it's glory!

I'm sure you're all asking yourselves one question...."Well....how did the cake do???"  Fortunately for you, I'll tell you, lol!

The awards ceremony for the show is held on the last day of the show, at about 4pm.  They go through all the divisional awards, and then they do the Wedding Cake Division.  They only announce the top 10 wedding cakes (there were about 50-70 this year). 

As they were going through the cakes (from 10 to 1), the closer they kept getting to 1, the less chance I figured that my cake was in the top 10.  Definitely by the time they got to 6th place, I had pretty much convinced myself that I didn't get in the top 10 this year.  I've always said I would be happy to be in the top 10, I seriously don't think I've ever win 1st place, the other competitors are just too good.  Well...........they called 5th place and THEY CALLED MY NAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was so stunned I actually screamed!  Oh yes I did!  My friends congratulated me and I was on cloud nine!  I think I was still on it after I got home from the show, lol.  My friend's took this picture shortly after they called my name:

So, needless to day, the show was a great success, lol!  

~Chelle

I have not given up!! :)

Hello Everyone!  I know....it's been a long time (a REALLY long time) since I posted, and I left you all hanging about the cake I was doing for Great American Cake Show in Westminster Maryland.  What can I say......life happens, lol!

I am working to post the rest of the information about the cake, as well as cakes I've done since then.

Stay tuned!

~Chelle

Separator Poles

I thought for quite a while on what to use to make the separator poles for the cake.  I could have just stacked the tiers on top of each other, but I love tiered cakes, and needed a place for all my awesome flowers, lol.  I had a lot of different ideas - some doable, some not.  I finally settled on wooden dowels covered in the colors of each branch of the military.  I was in Washington DC a few months ago, and found a display of military ties in a store, and took a picture of them. 

I purchased 1/2 inch wooden dowels from the hardware store, and had them cut to length, and sharpened on the ends.  I had to be able to push them into the dummy cakes, so they had to be sharp.  I then wrapped black floral tape along the length of the dowel rods so that the fondant would stick to it better:

So, I colored the fondant the appropriate colors, and rolled out strips of fondant and attempted to wrap them around one of the dowel rods.  Three tries later (and miraculously, no dowels were flung across the kitchen), it was evident that this was not going to work.  So, rather than have crappy looking fondant separators, I chose to use satin ribbon to create the separators. 

I laid the ribbon out on the table, taped the two main colors together on the back, then wrapped it around the dowel rod.  I wrapped the dowel rod with double stick tape before I attempted to tape the ribbon on.

It went fairly smoothly doing it this way.  Here are the finished separators:

The ends are taped so they wouldn't unravel, and so that they would fit smoothly into the dummy cakes.

Swags

The bottom tier of the cake featured swags of red, white and blue.   I used my pasta roller, and rolled out the fondant and placed it on my work mat.  I then used a ribbon cutter (from Geraldine Randlesome/Creative Cutters) to cut a ribbon the width that I wanted.  I then cut the ribbon to length (a little longer than I needed for the side of the tier) and flipped it over.  I folded one edge over (VERY lightly - you do NOT want a crease in the fondant) to produce a soft fold on one side.  I then wet the spots on the cake where I was going to attach the ends of the swag and placed the swag on the tier.  This is the same method that Geraldine teaches in her classes, btw.

I started with the red, and did red all the way around the tier.  I left some space at each 'corner' between the swags.  I don't really know why, I don't really know what I was thinking.  One I had the red done, I proceeded with the white and blue ones.  In addition to wetting the cake near the corners, I also wet the flat part of the previous swag, so it would be stuck on there pretty good. (I promise this will all make more sense when you see the pictures!).  After attaching each swag to the tier, I trimmed the ends with my palette knife to make them look better, and smoothed the edges with my finger.

After I finished with the swags, I took a look at the cake:

I knew I had to do something to cover the corners, but didn't really have an idea.  I had made yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons, but they would not sufficiently cover the corners.  I started to freak out, and called JEM for her opinion.  We ended up coming up with the idea to put red 'ribbons' over the corners, so I went ahead and did that:

I then tried to put the yellow support ribbons on the corners, and they just didn't look right.  After another consultation with JEM (What would I do without her?!?!?!?!?!), I cut out some stars, painted them gold with luster dust and vodka, and attached them to the corners:

Fly like an Eagle..................

Another element to the cake were eagles.  In my original plans, there was to be a gumpaste eagle on the top of the cake with wings outspread, and would have been overlooking the bridal couple (aim high, right?).  Well, needless to say, time got to me, and it didn't get made.  I had also planned to have eagles on the sides of the middle tier.  I was torn between trying to pipe them and use chocolate molds.  Well, after the success of piping the tiny eagles for the military logos, I figured I'd give it a shot hand-piping the bigger eagles.

I looked at the logo's that had eagles on them, and decided I liked the eagle on the US Marine's one the best.  So, I blew up the image on my computer until it was the size that I wanted for the side of the cake.  I then taped the images to a board and covered them with saran (like you would for run-sugar).  I decided on which tips to use (I think 3 or 4, not sure), and piped the eagle over the image.  They came out pretty good:

This is the eagle, before he was painted and dusted.  

I piped ten (10) of them, even though I only needed 5.  I figured this way I would have my pick of the best ones.  Once they were all dry, I painted them with a light brown color, then dry dusted them with Old Gold luster dust.  

They came out fantastic!!!

I didn't paint them with luster dust/vodka mixture because I really don't like how it looks when it dries.  It kind of dries splotchy to me.  This produced a much better looking product, in my opinion!

~Chelle

US Military Logo's

Part of my vision for the cake, was to have the US Military branch logos/emblems (not really sure which they should be called), on the sides of the top tier of the cake.  So, I started my search for them quite a while ago (November I believe).  In my search for them, I ran across something on the US Navy website that talked about 'authorized use' of the logo.  It got me thinking about copyright issues, etc....  Knowing that the cakes are photographed at cake shows, and sometimes those photographs are purchased by ACD (American Cake Decorating) and probably other publications, I wanted to be sure that (1) I did not get in trouble for duplicating the logo and (2) that the photos of my cake would be publishable should the publications want to publish it. 

So, through some research, I found email addresses for each branch of the military and emailed each branch seeking permission to duplicate the logo.  I explained who I was, what I wanted to do, and my purpose for such use, and respectfully requested permission to duplicate the logo.  I first emailed the Navy, and upon successful permission from them, I then emailed the other 4 branches. 

Here is the text of the email that I sent to the US Navy:

*******

To Whom It May Concern,

I am a cake decorator, and compete in numerous cake decorating competitions.  I have earned many First Place ribbons, trophies, and a Best of Show Award.

I am entering a wedding cake competition in which the theme is 'Holiday Cakes'.  I have chosen Veteran's Day as my holiday in order to produce a cake that honors the branches of our US Military.  I would like to include a replica of the US Navy Emblem on the cake, and in looking for it online, found this email address in order to request permission to replicate it for use on my cake. 

Thank you,

(my name)
*******

Much to my surprise I received a response pretty quickly!  Even more surprising was being told that I could duplicate the logo for the purpose I expressed in my email!  With the approval of the US Navy, I then set out to email the rest of the branches.  I received permission from the US Army, US Marines and US Air Force.  I never did receive a response from the US Coast Guard, but through my research learned that in times of war, they come under the direction of the US Navy.  So, since I had permission from the US Navy, I concluded that I had permission from the US Coast Guard.


Along with each email response, I received a graphic file that had the branch's logo in it.  Here is a picture of the logos, after being taped to a board and covered in saran (in preparation for piping them):

I actually made up two of these boards....one to pipe the designs on, and the other to fill in the backgrounds using the run sugar method (royal icing).  I piped each design element using royal icing, and let them dry before painting the gold elements gold.

Here they are after piping the designs:

 Navy

This is the first time I ever attempted to hand-pipe an eagle and the American flag.

 Coast Guard

It was kind of fun piping the anchors!  I cleaned up the edges of the flag with a damp paintbrush (that's how I got the nice point at the bottom too).

Marines

It was a little challenging piping the elements on this one, but they look great!

Army

By the time I got to my third eagle, I had it down pat, lol.  The icing was a little soft (due to the coloring I think), so I had to pipe one 'feather' on each side and then wait for it to dry before piping the next one.

Air Force

I was happy with the eagle on this one, but not with the 'shield'.  I still think it looks messy where the blue and white come together, but wasn't sure how to make it less messy.

I attempted to use run-sugar to make the backgrounds of each logo, but after doing them twice, and hating them both times, I concluded that using fondant circles would be much better for my sanity and the quality of the cake.  So, I colored fondant to match the background colors the best I could, and rolled it thin using my pasta roller.  I cut the circles out using round cookie cutters, and set them on saran covered boards to dry thoroughly.  Once they were dry, I used some egg white to glue the smaller circles on the bigger ones, then used tiny bits of royal icing to attach the piped elements to the fondant circles.  

Once the elements were attached to the fondant circles, I piped the interior borders on the logos, and hand piped some of the elements on the logos (the laurel leaves and arrows in the eagles talons on the Army logo, the chain and black lines on the Navy logo, and the yellow symbol on the Air Force logo).  I have to say that the hand painting was a lot of fun, and looked really nice when I was done!

I attempted to pipe a rope border around three of them (Navy, Marines and Coast Guard), but that wasn't going too well.  So, I piped a plain border around the Air Force and Army logo's, and once they were dry, attached them to the cake sides.  I then attached the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard logos to the sides of the cake and made fondant ropes to go around the edge of them.  I attached the fondant ropes, and once dry, painted them with gold luster dust mixed with vodka.  There are not a lot of in-process photos of this because most of this was done the day before I left for the show, and I was more concerned with having a finished cake than with taking pictures.

Here are pictures of the finished products, on the cake: 

As you can see, the names of each branch have been left off of the logo's, simply because I did not have enough room to pipe or paint them on.

 

~Chelle

Poppies

No cake, whose purpose is to honor those that have served their country, would be complete without Poppies.  The original vision for the cake was to have a field of poppies on the top of the cake, in which would be standing a bride and groom.  Well.....time caught up with me and there was no time to get the bride and groom done (I have the grooms legs and feet, but that's all, lol!). 

So, I purchased some Poppy cutters at a cake show, in anticipation of using them for this cake.  However...when I looked at them, I realized the flowers would have been half the size of the bride and groom....well, that won't work!

The only cutter I had that would even come close to producing a poppy was my hydrangea cutter.  The petals aren't as wide as they should be, and they really didn't end up looking like poppies - but I did my best with what I had.

I did not make them on wires, since they were going to be sitting on the top of the cake.  I used egg crate foam to dry them in, so they would keep their cupped shape.  I cut out the flower with the hydrangea cutter, softened and frilled the edges with my ball tool, then cupped them and set them in the foam to dry. 

Once they were dry, I dusted them with red petal dust, called Poppy Red.  They didn't look that red for me, but what do I know about the color of poppies, lol.  To try to make them look more authentic, I used some black royal icing and piped a fairly large dot in the center of each flower, then inserted 5 to 6 black stamens into each. 

Here they are all done:

Since I had no bride and groom for the top of the cake, I had no idea what to do.  In a near-panic, I called my best friend JEM, almost freaking out.  Well, she did some looking online about poppies, etc.... and ended up looking up the poem Flander's Field.  Somewhere in the information, it mentioned a wreath of poppies, so that's what I went with and decided to make a wreath of poppies on the top of the cake.  I had some little leaves that I thought would look good and make a nice looking wreath.

Here is the wreath I ended up with:

I loved it, as did everyone else.  The judges, however......not so much.  They didn't like that it didn't go with the color scheme of the rest of the cake.  Oh well, I like it, and I explained the purpose of it on the Judges Sheet that accompanied the cake.

~Chelle

Roses

Roses.........I love Roses.......I love making them........I love dusting them..........they are just so pretty!!!

There are a few ways to make gumpaste Roses.

You can make the centers yourself out of gumpaste, you can use a mold to make the centers, or you can buy styrofoam centers.  The advantage to the styrofoam centers is they result in a much lighter weight Rose......however, you do have to buy them and make sure you have them when you need them - this can be a problem sometimes, lol!   Using a mold to make the centers has it's advantages too...it's a one-time cost and you just need gumpaste in order to make them.

Both of these also result in your centers being the same size (if you like that).  I, being anal about stuff sometimes (ok.....most of the time, lol), prefer the mold or styrofoam route.  So far, it's been styrofoam (which has resulted in me calling to order them and begging to get them in time).  See....with styrofoam, I don't have to make the centers a few days ahead of time to let them dry.  I simply put a little hot glue on the end of the wire and shove it into the bottom of the styrofoam center.  They will cool and harden in a few hours (but I usually wait overnight).

Making your own centers, freehand, is of course the cheapest route to go.  I feel it's the method with the most variability - I'm not very good at making things the same size, despite my anal-ness about such things, lol.

Once you have determined which method you want to use for your centers, you then have to contemplate the petals of the Rose.  Here, again, there are different ways of making rose petals.  Probably the least complicated is a 5 petal blossom cutter (JEM makes a good one).  This is the method I was taught and have used to date to make my roses for competitions.  You can also cut each petal out individually and attach them to the center (FMM makes great rose petal cutters).  It is also possible to form rose petals from small balls of paste and using your fingers, thing and create the petal.

I have always used the 5 petal blossom cutter, but at a cake show a few months ago, one of the judges commented on my rose petals, and from the comment, it seemed that the judge thought they were individual petals (I took it as a compliment that the judge couldn't tell, lol).  However, it got me thinking.....why not try individual petals?  So, I decided with these roses, I would try them.  We'll see how they come out, and if I really do make them all with individual petals, lol.

Today I glued the wires into the centers and taped the wires:

Yes, there are two different size centers........I apparently didn't count properly and was short 5 of the xs size centers, so decided to use the small size for the full roses that I'm making.


................................

So,  in my infinite wisdom (ok.....stop laughing!), I thought it would be a good idea to try making roses differently than I ever have.  For a competition.  Yeah....not so bright, lol.  I wanted to try making roses with individual petals, rather than a 5-petal cutter.  I decided to use the three largest cutters of the FMM set (mentioned above).

I first cut 6 petals with the middle cutter from the set.  One petal is for the first petal (the one that wraps around the center).  Then the next two are attached in a spiral around the center.  The remaining three are spiraled around the center also.  I then cut four petals of the 2nd to largest cutter.  These were also spiraled around the rose.

The flower looked nice, but I just wasn't happy with it.  I just didn't look as "pretty" as some of my others.  Here are my favorite roses that I have ever made (these were made with a 5-petal cutter):

After talking it over with my consultant (JEM for those of you who have been reading for a while), I decided to trash the rose with the individual petals and make my roses with the 5-petal cutter.  They are prettier (to me), I'm used to making them that way, and (most importantly) I won't be happy if I don't, lol.

I got all the white roses finished today.  They are medium blooms.  Here they are:

and here's a close-up!

............................

Here are the red roses that I made.  There are three different sizes of roses.

Here are the buds (one layer of petals):

Here are the smaller ones (two layers of petals):

Here are the larger ones (three layers of petals):

Here is all of them together:

.................................

Dusting - it brings flowers to life!   It was now time to dust all the roses I made.  It took some trial and error to be really happy with the red roses....since they actually started out pink, I had to find a way to turn them red.  I tried layering various shades of reds on them, but they just didn't look right.  I then happened upon a container of Pointsettia (from Crystal Colors) that I had in a draw.  I tried it on the roses and HOLY COW were they red!!!   They were a vibrant beautiful RED!   I dusted all of the red roses with it.  Then started looking around for a darker red for the edges of the petals.......well I did not have one.  So, I left the red roses as is.

It probably took an entire day to dust all of the red roses, and the red carnations (from a previous post).  It was a beautiful day the day I was dusting the red flowers.  It was so nice that I decided to open the kitchen window.  Did I mention that the kitchen window was behind me?  (Can you guess where this is heading???)  Well, it was.  There was a lovely breeze coming through the window the whole day.  I was also sitting with my netbook on the table, watching old tv shows (A-Team!) while dusting.  When I was finished dusting all the red flowers I noticed that my computer had a layer of red dust ALL OVER IT.  Upon further examination.....the red dust was EVERYWHERE!  The kitchen table, the floor, the stove, the counters, the sink, the DOG.  I couldn't imagine how it got so many places - it never had before.  Then it dawned on me that the window was open the entire time.  The lovely breeze blew the red dust all over the entire kitchen!   So, the lesson to be learned here is to not sit in front of an open window on a breezy day when you are dusting flowers.  On the bright side - I probably did not inhale very much of it!

I apparently FORGOT to take pictures of the dusted roses...........the white ones were dusted with Super Pearl dust.  Here is a picture of one of the full red ones (from it's place on the cake):

It's not your eyes playing tricks....the red really is that vibrant in the picture.  It wasn't quite so vibrant in person, I promise :)

~Chelle