Cowgirl Boots Birthday Cake

I've never really understood the love affair that girls have with anything that goes on their feet. Personally I have a grand total of four pairs of shoes in my closet. Sunday shoes,  Sneakers, Winter boots, and work out in the yard sneakers, (which are really just an older pair of sneakers).  I would be scared to try and count the shoes that my daughter owns, and regardless of how many pair are in the black hole that she calls her closet, it is apparently never enough.

It was no surprise then, that when I told her I was going to make her a Cowgirl Boot Birthday Cake, for her 16th Birthday she thought that was the best idea in the whole world.... What she didn't know is that when she sat down with me to look for the boots she wanted me to make on Country Outfitters website, is that she was also picking out the pair that I bought her for her birthday (What was I going to do, it's her 16th birthday, and no matter how old she get's she will always be my little cowgirl, I couldn't not get her some boots)

She Loved her cake, and the real boots came as a total surprise... it was a great night.

I get a lot of questions about how I make my cakes, so I took a lot of pictures this time, so people can see how it comes together, (Just as a note this is probably the most complicated cake I've made from a technical perspective, figuring out how to cut all the fondant correctly and putting it all together took me quite a while)

I started by building a "sole" out of  Foam Core, by scoring it with my exacto knife I can bend it to the shape I want and then the center piece is hot glued in to maintain the shape and provide stability.

You can see that I've spray painted the sole brown and a clear coat to not only look like leather but to also act as a moisture barrier between the rice crispy's and the foam core... I have also added a dowel that will help provide support for the cake, and have roughed in the base with rice crispy's (you need a solid foundation to build the cake on and the rice crispy's work great for that.)

Here is a picture showing both boots with the base roughed in with rice crispys

I let the rice crispys sit out overnight so they could set, and then using my exacto knife I did some final shaping and smoothed out all the rough spots. (you can see the boot on the left is shaped and smoothed)

To get that really smooth look, I did a crumb coat using ABC frosting (American Butter Cream) which will form a light crust after sitting out for a while, then by using a paper towel you can place it over the frosting and using light pressure from you fingertips you can smooth it out.  (The boot on the left is done at this point, the boot on the right is still in process, it is pretty rough at this point, and I will clean it up a lot more before smoothing with a paper towel)

I've started to add the Cake layers now

Here I have all the layers added.

Here both boots have been crumb coated and smoothed

I've started to add the Fondant... I chose a nice leather tan color, as ultimately they will be mostly black, with some tan color showing through (you will see how it all works at the end)

I ended up making the top part of the boot (that has the rounded arch) entirely out of fondant and just seamed it onto the top.

 I've added all the pieces of fondant, (except for the heel, which I will do last as it will be covered with black fondant)

Now I've added all the Stitching marks ( I used a quilters/sewing marking wheel, which worked great)

Using a toothbrush and black food coloring I used my thumb to spatter the boots until I got the look that I wanted, leaving the toes tan.

After the black food coloring dries, I used a paintbrush to go over the stitching with blue and white food coloring to make it stand out more.... and that's it.

Here's a couple of pictures of actually cutting the Cake.