Designing for wedding cakes

Someone who goes looking for a hand made topper is looking for the out of the ordinary. Sometimes they have very specific ideas and others just a generally sense of wanting an "it's gotta say us". I always feel like it's my job to take thier thoughts and apply my experience to executing them. To provide both an outside perspective and a set of skills is where I come in. This is the pretty specific request Natalie W. sent.

"I would like to see your sketch on what you could make for me.  I am a tall bride (6'1"!) and my groom is 5'7".  I've attached some pictures of what we look like- And that's my wedding gown :) I will be holding a bouquet of pink, orange, white,and yellow gerber daisies. I would like both pieces to resemble us as much as possible- I have fair skin, slightly longer than shoulder length light blonde hair (that I will be wearing in curls over one shoulder on my wedding day), and blue eyes.  He has light skin, short/curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a brown goatee (just the chin part, not a mustache). I would like for my groom to be wearing a navy blue NY Yankees hat (with the NY in white) and a standard black tux.  I would also like for him to have a blue superman shirt on under his tuxedo shirt, and for him to be posed in a way that he is ripping apart his tux to reveal the superman symbol underneath.  You can pose me however you think would be cute"

In a way this makes it very easy because there's less guessing about details but I knew she had a fairly strong expectations for the finished piece. Her pose is based on the idea of them being comfortable with the height difference. It's graceful. It plays with idea of him as The Man of Steel. And she is still slightly taller. It's a topper representing them. She sent a note and some pics after. I love any kind of feedback but this was especially appreciated.

Thanks to you, our cake topper was a huge hit :) Thank you for making such a
wonderful piece of art!! I've attached two pictures for you...

I love and am discouraged by looking at similiar work by other artists. There is a art contest called Spectrum which always includes sculptural and often polymer clay entries. They publish an annual book containing the best of them. This is my fantasy work. A World of Warcraft Dwarf proposing to a gnome. I really like these guys but...

This is the level of finish and design to which I aspire. It is a piece based of a painting by Frank Frazetta and is from the Spectrum site, spectrumfantasticart.com  . It is truly amazing to me.

It's good to have goals. Right?

First topper

When first imagining what sort of custom topper a couple might want I thought small bride and groom dressed like the real bride and groom and standing in the classic side by side pose. This has not proved to be the case. People who want a truly unique topper are a bold lot of wedding swashbucklers. My first topper for a client wasn't even figural. She was a librarian and her fiancee was an actual private investigator. They were looking for a pulp cover art sort of thing not even 3D but Siobhan was very excited when I described an idea for a fake book piece. The only clay is a core for the cover and the base. That said it was lots of fun doing the art and composing the critic's blurbs and writing the teaser extract. Except for one small art change and a grammatical correction she accepted the work which is always gratifying. And I did get to make a film noir figural topper much later for another client so there's that.

How I got started

This is my very first polymer clay piece. My daughter, Eleanor, had used Sculpey brand clay for several small projects and frankly it looked like fun so I decided to give it a try. The pie men are a bit over 4 inches. 4 to 6 inches is a good size for polymer projects. Everything was sculpted completely before the piece was baked. This is the hard way but I didn't know any better then and being a guy don't like to read directions. Sculpey can be baked multiple times making it easy to build up in layers and sections and much less likely you'll damge one part while working on another. This is the easy way. Inside there is a wire armature which holds things up while the clay is soft and extends into the base for stability. Slap on some craft paint and Ta-Da you've got something that looks almost like a .....wedding .....cake .....topper. Hey, there's an idea.