Happy Birthday to Me!!

Yep, today is my birthday! May 22. I am celebrating 48 years. I consider it a joy, a good thing to celebrate birthdays. God has given me many wonderful journeys--some low, some high. I will celebrate later today with old friends and a number of favorite goodies. And while I will not be eating the cakes pictured below, I will indeed have cheesecake. That's a must!

We have been decorating cakes all week at The Cutting Cafe. Please hop over to that blog post to see all the beauty!

I made this cake first. I made one alteration. I cut a whole in the top for a tea light candle (battery operated). I had to fashion a little stand to raise the tea light high enough to poke through the top cake layer. All the layers follow the original pattern in that each layer is a box that can be oped.

Such Happy Colors!

Did see the butterfly?

Top View

My next cake took quite a bit more tweaking. I wanted the whole cake to be lighted. I used flowers from one of The Cutting Cafe border files to make little "windows." I lined the inside of each cake layer with a printed velum. Remember to add the vellum to each layer while they are still flat (not after rolling layers in to a circle).

Because I wanted the light to shine top to bottom, I cut holes in each layer. This presented a glitch with stacking the layers. Thus I added the tabs to both sides of the top two layers. This worked well to stack the layers. Only the bottom later of this cake opens to allow access to the tea light. In order for the tea light to remain stationary, I simply shrank the pattern of one layer to fit the size of the tea light. The fun is always in the decorating!

Altered layers to allow stacking.

Assemble each layer.

Shrink layer to hold tea light.

Stack the layers.

Dceorate

Decorate

Light it Up