Beach Ball Blowout

Cue the Beach Boys Music:

Na na na nare nare nare na na nare na na......

(that was that electric guitar Beach Boy-ish music...)

It's summertime! Time for swimming pools, the beach, flip flops and frozen drinks.....

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with a beach ball blow out cake? This is one of my most popular designs, and I get tons of requests for info on how I did the ball, so here is the scoop:

The ball is 8 inches of pure unadulterated......... Styrofoam. Bet you thought I was gunna say cake, huh? Do I look nuts?..... No seriously, you could do it in cake just the same way, but we did not need that much cake.

Figuring out how to get the beach ball pattern on there was challenging. My first few attempts were shall we say, less than stellar. Then it hit me. The stroke of genius. The Divine intervention. The best idea I have ever had in my entire life!!

I drove my little self right over to Walgreen's (making one pit stop at the gas station for a fountain Diet Coke because they have the best syrup to carbonation ratio of course.) And I picked up an inflatable beach ball. I cut out one segment of the ball and scanned it in two pieces with my scanner. I then cropped the two halves together in my editing program, and voila! I had one perfect jpeg image of a beach ball segment, that I could then resize to any size I needed to fit any size ball I needed.

I printed it out the size that I needed, and cut it out to make a template. I love templates. I use them for everything. I am not sure which I love more: templates, Diet Coke, or cornstarch. They all play such a huge roll in my life. (I think cornstarch is winning; I adore that stuff.) Then I used that template to cut out the sections of colored fondant, and applied them to the piping gel covered ball. White circles on the opposite ends of the ball were applied for authenticity.

And the cute little fishies. The fish were made by cutting football shapes with a circle cutter. I made the gills by impressing the end of a piping tip into the surface. The fins were made by freehand cutting little shapes from fondant and scoring and ruffling them with a toothpick, then gluing them on the fish body. I attached them to wires with melted chocolate on the back. (Use royal icing in the summer or your fish will swim away.)

The curlies are made by wrapping strips of fondant around a dowel rod until they are firm enough to hold their shape. Then slide them off, shape as desired, and let dry fully. I demonstrate this in the Topsy Turvy DVD.

The life preservers are simply made from cutting white fondant discs and applying red stripes, then wrapping a clay gun string around as the rope. I demonstrate this in the Boxes and Bows DVD .

Now it is your turn to give it a try.

HAVE A BALL!

Happy Summer,

Sharon