I decided on a color palette using the color wheel and the split contrast color chart. The birthday was for a little girl, so I wanted some pink in there, so I went with a dark fuchsia, sky blue, and a bright lime for the base.
The picture I have here I took without the flash...the ones I took with flash came out fuzzy. I was hurrying to get the pictures taken so we could go, as my three year old was demanding we go to Cartwheels and Coffee. The coloring in the photo of the back of the cake is closer to the true shades.
I've notoriously had a problem getting my reds really red. It takes me forever to finally get it. I followed the directions by SeriousCakes to get red buttercream, but used it on the fondant instead, starting with the colors rose, golden yellow (she uses orange but I didn't have that) and the AmeriColor Super Red. That stuff is no joke! I dyed my hands like crazy, but in the end I did have a nice Elmo red to work with.
Other than the sheer size of this cake and the issues of making sure it measured the same on width and height, it was a pretty straightforward cake. I am so glad to have done one of these now!
Note: Elmo's eyes fell off when I put the cake in the car. I nixed those eyes and re-did them (with my engine running no less!) and after I took this picture I fixed the mouth to be more...puppet-like, I guess. I was in a hurry though so I didn't get a picture of the finished Elmo. It's not much different anyway.
I really hope they like their cake and enjoy eating cake for days!
