Sparkly, Pretty Girl!

So, how do you follow a 7-layer, 9 pound rainbow cake for your girl's second 5-yr birthday celebration? Well, with a very large mermaid cake of course. Courtesy of Family Fun, we had a decent map of how to construct this cake, although I wanted to use more cupcakes (the easy-to-serve to preschoolers factor). We also chose to add arms, hands and a nose to our mermaid girl, and (of course) accessories and some edible flowers (Nasturtium, Borage and Squash blossom) to jazz her up!

The girls loved helping decorate, and they both had some great ideas to embellish this gal (shells, necklace, bracelets). Their favorite decorating item was the Wilton gold edible "glitter" stars. They are really cool, and looked neat in the mermaid's hair and on her tail. I used my new favorite Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe to frost her, and needed one and a half batches. The tail took 3.5 rolls of Necco wafers, and I covered it with Wilton green edible spray since M wanted a green tail. And, I'm very thankful that I had this heavy-duty white poster board with my craft supplies because this sparkly, pretty girl was way too big for anything else. Miss M, and all her school buddies loved this mermaid gal, and she was really fun to make. Check out more specific instructions on Coolest Birthday Cakes right here.