The Making: Tigger Birthday Cake

Hi, all! I've said in my earlier posts that I suck at figurines. Okay..maybe I'm being over dramatic. Maybe I just feel that figurines are so much work and knowing how I'm such a perfectionist at doing things, it adds on to the pressure of decorating my cakes. I always have to get it exactly right and that sometimes takes the fun out of it. I've realised now that any art should be fun. Once I had that in my mind, making figurines got a little bit more enjoyable and fun. (I still think it's a lot of work though!)

Truthfully, all the figurines that are in my blog, I've never learned from anyone and I don't even own books concerning on how to make these cartoon character figurines. My tools for this are my eyes...and a little bit of brain power and deciphering. I can somehow look at a pic of the object that I need to replicate and produce the same image into fondant. It's a gift really haha..yeah yeah..me and my braggy self needs to shut up! Seriously though, it does take a lot of thought. Perhaps I should take a short cut and buy one of those Debbie Brown books to make my life a little easier. (FYI: Debbie Brown is a famous cake decorator who produces a lot of books specialising on figurines and cartoon characters.)
So let's cut the crap and get on with it, shall we? As with any figurine, you gotta make the basic shapes first.The head, torso and legs in the desired position must be made. I'm sorry if I don't give step by step instructions on how to do this. I hope you are as visual as I am. If you really want to learn, well, who knows I might give classes one day haha...basically teach you on how to use the dexterity of your hands.
Then on to the face of our happy Tigger. I stuck on some yellow cutouts on the eyes and mouth area. 
Basically you gotta catch that happy and slightly crazed expression of Tigger..if you can't, you'll only end up having an ordinary tiger in your hands.
Side view with his cheeky tongue sticking out. After that, I let it dry a couple of days. See this is what some people don't get. Most of them think that I do all of this in ONE day. The truth is take several days for me to finish even one figurine. I have to let the frikin thing dry to be firm first before doing any further decorating...so it takes time people. I'm not a super-figurine-made-in-a minute kind of person.Like I said I'm a perfectionist, hates to be rushed and would rather take the time to produce a great masterpiece :P...but enough about me..haha..
So next, the cake. Here I demonstrate how I use the cupping method to smoothe the edges of the fondant.
Then I cut out haphazard strips of black fondant to produce the tiger stripes.More of this technique is shown here.
The bottom borders were made up of rolled orange fondant to resemble a tiger's tail. I then painted on some stripes unto it with black food gel paste mixed with a little clear vanilla as shown above.

Views of the cake from all angles. Oh! I forgot to tell you how I made the tail of Tigger himself. Well, I basically twisted some wire and covered it well with some orange gum paste and again painted on the stripes. Let it dry and stuck it on his butt!
So there you have it a jolly 2 tiered Tigger cake complete with stripes and a tail! Fit for a two year old boy born in the year of the Tiger! Roarrr!!

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