Two Dino Siblings on a Cake

A good friend of mine wanted me to make a cake for her kids' birthday party.  There's a five year old boy and a three year old girl, and their birthdays are very close together.  She had SO much on her plate, getting stuff ready for the party, and I just honestly really wanted to do this cake for them (it was my birthday gift lol).  We looked at a few different inspiration photos online and picked the best one, and I went to work.
The cake itself is just chocolate cake with strawberry filling on the bottom 12" tier.  The top tier is just one 10" layer of chocolate cake.  The frosting is vanilly buttercream.  The dinos are completely made out of fondant and coloring gels.  I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to pull off this look, but I think I nailed it!  This cake had me giddy for a whole day.
I did mess up the strawberry filling, but I salvaged it (we had no more strawberries in the house and I had no way to get to the store, so salvaged filling it is!)  I tiered the cakes and covered them with light green frosting, let it crust (read: waited 20 minutes) and smoothed it with Viva paper towels.  I had leftover fondant from the wedding cake on the 24th and that's what I used for this cake.

I wanted it to be obvious that there was an older boy dino and a younger, very girly girl dino so that her daughter would be able to tell which one was hers.  I just had a blast with this cake.  I got the shine going by smoothing quite a bit on the counter with a little shortening.  I plopped the bodies on, then the necks and heads, then the tails and paws.  I rolled some half and half (colored and white) balls for the eyes and eyelids, and painted on coloring gels for eyelashes, pupils, and mouths.

Note the cute little lipsticked girl!  The spikes on the boy dino were next.  The four largest spikes were fashioned on wires and inserted into the cake.  I did the boy spots and called that dino finished.  I then piped on the moss/grass with the grass tip so I wouldn't have to deal with going in-between the spikes of the two dinos.

The girl dino's spines were next.  They are just triangles of fondant, attached with my favorite gumpaste glue.  Then I did her spots.  Girly girl accomplished!  I glued on some claws and painted the girl's "fingernails" red, then filled in with the darker green grassy/mossy stuff.  For some reason I liked to look at it as moss, I don't know why.  I piped their names and ages on the side of the cake, ran electrical tape along the edges of the cake board (I know, tacky, but you can't tell and honestly who cares?!) to finish it off and called it a cake.  I am so pleased with how this cake came out and the kids loved it.  Stinkie ran around like crazy and started to have mini meltdowns because we were cutting into his nap by hanging out at the party, so we had to leave early, but we had the BEST time!  It is so wonderful to have friends, isn't it?