Frozen Butter Cream Transfer: The baby shower invitation

I am making my sister's baby shower cake.  She showed me the invitation and I decided to try a frozen butter cream transfer (FBCT)  just to see if I could.  I have only tried it the one time, and it was a goopy mess.  I was much more successful this time.

This is the invitation I am copying.

If you want the image to be exact, you actually need to create a mirror image (kind of like I do when I am carving a stamp.)  If there are words, you definitely need to do a mirror image.  As there were no words, I decided to just leave it as-is.  The cake image will have the girl on the other side.

Take some wax paper, outline it in black or brown.  I chose brown because eventually, the cake this will go in will have chocolate frosting, and the brown will blend right in.  

After the outline, you have to do some logistical icing.  Things in the foreground (the lips, the sunglasses, the spots on the purse, the buckles on the shoes) have to be done first.  I was very unorganized and kept getting up to get more and more piping bags. 

Eventually, you'll have something that looks like this: 

Yes, it's ugly.  Notice you can't see her eyes, the spots on the purse, etc.  That's because what you are looking at above is what will go on the cake.  This is what will be stuck to the cake itself.  

What you don't see until I pick up the wax paper is this:

This is what will show once you freeze it, place it on the cake and peel the wax off.   It would look better if I have covered the whole thing is chocolate frosting, to match the cake.  The frosting would have "squished" or settled everything nicely, and it would match the cake it is going on.

You get the idea, yes?

I'm going to make the crib with the flowers too and just hand-pipe the mobile.  On the crib I will hand-pipe the cake's message.

I bet Buddy doesn't have to clean his *own* mess.

Frozen Buttercream Transfer

My teacher mentioned a process called Frozen Buttercream Transfer, where you take any picture you like, create it in buttercream on wax paper, freeze it, and then transfer it onto your cake. It's great when re-creating logos, popular cartoon characters, etc.

The trick to it, though, is to paint it in layers, with the "front" layer painted first and the background colors painted over those. Here's my first attempt.

I will warn you, it stunk. :) But practice makes perfect.

Find a picture you like and print it.

Place your picture under a bit of wax paper. Create the outline in black. with icing using a #1 or # 2 tip. Notice I also colored the bats in the moon as well.

Start filling in the smaller things, like the sun, the yellow windows and the purple detail on the roof.

I didn't get a picture of the next thing, which was, color in the main color, the black of the house. It does not matter if you get into any of the yellow, because the yellow is down on the paper first, up front. If back gets behind it, you won't see it, because the yellow is the front layer.

Once you're done, you can also add a smear of the icing that's on your cake. I figured later that this really was not needed, but every instructional I read said to.

Place your buttercream transfer in the freezer. Prepare your cake, making sure that the buttercream on the cake is firm and set. (mine was not).

After at least 15 minutes in the freezer (can make these days and days ahead of time), place the buttercream side of the wax paper down on your cake. Gently peel off the wax paper, rubbing it down if you need to loosen some of the buttercream off the wax paper.

Voila. Buttercream transfer. It's kind-of goopy, but I'm getting the idea.