My Niece Holly's Bridal Shower Cake

OOOOHHHHHHHH I had sooooooo much fun planning and creating this shower and cake for my beautiful niece Holly!!!!  My mother is the best party planner I know and I am so happy that I even inherited one percent of her creativity gene!!!  

Holly's color theme for her wedding was red and white.  The cake was a white cake with strawberry cream filling.  The recipe was from the Wilton website.  It was pretty tasty!!! I used gum paste for the cutouts and they didn't come out very red for as much coloring as I added, but it still turned out pretty!!!

The bride and groom silhouette was from the Wild Card cartridge.  It even looks like Holly and CJ a little!!!!  Super cute!!!

The Doily and the heart borders are from the Cake Basics cartridge!!!

I cut out the flowers from the Wilton gum paste flower making kit!!!  Love this kit.  I've only used the really simple ones.  Some day I will be bold and try the other more intricate flowers.  The only reason I don't try them now is I feel I have no time.....too rushed trying to get everything put together.  Maybe someday I'll just make a cake for the heck of it without all the pressure.  Yea, right!!!  Who am I kidding???

And here is the cake I am most proud of so far.  I think it is just gorgeous, especially for a beginner and novice who has no clue what she is doing.  The green leaf border and white center of the flowers is royal icing which is a little dryer and sturdier than regular icing.  It hardens nicely to keep a nice shape.  It is easy to make.  I got the recipe from the Wilton website.  They are my go to site!!!  I am still not very good at smoothing out the icing, but I'm getting a little bit better from the tips I get from my friends Teresa and Alesha!!!

Here's the invitation that I sent for the shower.  It matches the cake!!!

Here's one of the prize gift bags and goody bag tags I made using my new Cricut Imagine.  It is one of the newer Cricut machines that prints images using an HP printer built inside and then cuts the image just like the Cricut Expression machine.  I love this machine.  It is absolutely amazing!!!!  The "Sweet" image was from the Imagine More cartridge!!  I made little red and white chocolate heart molds for the goody bags!!!