Fishing and Scuba Man Cake

I had a lot of fun making this fishing and scuba diving cake.
I offered up a personal cake as an auction item for our church. It was fun when the wife called with the request for a cake that incorporated fishing and scuba diving, two of her husband's hobbies.

I haven't sculpted a lot of people in my cake making "career" (it's really just a hobby), so it was fun to get some practice with this. I thought my figurine looked like him too. What do you think?

After brainstorming with my husband, we came up with the idea to elevate the top tier off the bottom tier and make it into a dock. I made this wood grain by first cutting in straight lines with straight edge and pizza cutter. I used the non-brush end of a paint brush to put the nail holes. I then lightly rolled my pizza cutter over the top to give it the wood-grain effect. To make the dock structure, I cut out a piece of thin particle board to the size of my small cake. I then cut dowels to length and hammered in the 4 pilings to the square board. I covered the wooden dowels in fondant before sticking it into the cake. I then put my smaller cake onto of the structure I had built. I then covered it with the brown fondant.

I don't generally do cakes with a frosting exterior. I am a fondant girl. However, in thinking about the water effects I wanted to create, from the ombre to the texture, I thought frosting would be the answer. I loved sculpting all the fish, tackle box and bucket. If you could see the other sides of the cake (I should have taken more pictures), you would see I also had a shark, stingray, crab and sea horse. My trick for making the scuba diver was to find a Google image I liked, printing it out, laying it on top of the fondant and cutting out the outline with an exacto-knife.

I generally like having my kids help me out with the cake making process. Kenzie was definitely able to help me bake the cake, which she really enjoys. However, I did the decorating on my own. It wasn't a cake they could really help with at all.