snake cake

As I posted the Climbing wall cake I made for my son's birthday last year, I thought I should post the snake cake that he had for his party this year. He had a wonderful party where Noah's ark exotic pets visited the house with an amazing collection of animals including an eagle owl, a boa constictor and a tarantula!!

I held a tarantula!!

anyway, it had to be a snake cake. It's not exactly professional, but I made it from scratch and I'm very very proud of it (it tasted good too!)

Climbing Wall Cake and some nail art.

A bit of an interesting combination you might think, but I thought it might be a good idea to put my non-stamping items all in one post.
My son is having a climbing wall party today and I promised him that I would "try" to make him a climbing wall cake...
it was going to have a person on it as well, but my roll out icing was just too soft and looked awful, so I decided to just go for the wall.
In case you are interested in making one for yourself (?!?)
I used 3 madeira slices from Asda, and stacked them end on with buttercream and jam in between, I used a packet of asda ready to roll white icing, added some black food colouring, then kneaded it until I had a rock like pattern. then I rolled it out into a random shape. and dumped it onto the cake (which I had painted with warmed apricot jam). I then just made it fit. I wanted it random to look like rocks. I made some more rocks from ready to roll icing (I had to open a second pack) for the candles, and decorated with Skittles, tutti-fruttis and strawberry laces.
This is the first fondant decorated cake I have made since leaving school and I'm quite pleased with it.

now on to the nail art. I recently bought myself a konad nail stamping set and a couple of extra plates, and I can't stop playing. these are a couple of my recent attempts. (My nails are really short as I have to wear them that way for work (and I am not allowed to wear nail varnish to work so I get to re-do my nails twice a week!!)