Custom Bird + Mouse Cake Topper: From Start to Finish

If you asked me what the most playful, most whimsical, most "I cannot believe I am getting paid for this" and "If I told the little girl version of me that I would do this as a part of my job one day she would simply die" part of my business is, I wouldn't hesitate before answering: making wedding cake toppers. 

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: making custom wedding cake toppers has been in my bones since I was about 4, when I made Christmas Tree ornaments out of Sculpey with my mom.

The same skills that I now use for making these little custom items developed over the years in different forms; I honed them while making miniature dollhouse furniture and decorations in middle school, while making life-sized children out of cardboard boxes and fabric in my high school art classes, and later, in college, when taking ceramics classes as a part of my major requirement. 

Fast forward to the present moment and thanks to the booming DIY wedding business, the emergence of Etsy, and the custom Meerkat Cake Topper that I made for my own wedding a few years ago, I now have this small slice of my current biz. 

All of that being said, I recently completed a very fun custom Bird + Mouse Cake Topper for a couple who is getting married this week, and thought it would be fun to show you how the ordering + creation process works. 

Here we go...

1. Client sends me a private conversation on Etsy with the following inspiration images and a request for a quick turnaround time. I reply with my rate for a project that involves my creating the figurines out of clay (much more work than using plastic figurines, as I sometimes do!) + the extra charge for the rush order.

The client replies and says LETS DO IT! I send her a custom order invoice and lots of questions about personalizing the cake topper (i.e. What length do you want the veil to be? What color should the bowtie be? Do you want lace around the bottom? Etc.)

2. Once I have all the details straight, I start creating the cake topper. I make the figurines out of clay first, and then cook them to allow them to harden. Once they've cooled, I paint them and add the details.

In the case of this cake topper, I also had to make wire feet for the bird and press them into the clay before baking. 

3. While I'm waiting for the paint on the figurines to dry, I make the base, the bunting, the veil, and all other details. Sadly, I didn't take pictures of these elements while in-progress, as I sometimes get too wrapped up in the creation process to think about anything else, let alone a blog post...I am trying my best to get better at this ;) 

4. While I'm waiting for the base to dry, which takes a couple of days (I did not use cookable clay for this part), I email the client a few pics of the in-progress cake topper and give her a chance to make any requests/tweaks. Luckily, in the case of this cake topper, she was happy and had no changes!

5. I finish the topper! Paint the base, glue everything down, add the bowtie + lace, and voila! When I'm done, I send the client a final pic to ensure he/she is happy, and then package the little topper up (VERY carefully) and ship it off.

Can you stand how fun this is?  Seriously, if you told me when I was 10 that I would still be making little clay figurines and dressing them up as a part of my "job" when I was 30, I wouldn't have believed it. Life is so funny in that way. 

Want to view some of my other custom cake toppers? Check them out on my painting website, here. 

Bird + Mouse illustration image credit: Summer Anne Burton, Buzzfeed