Don’t you just love it when you find a use for your digital kits outside of the album?

For my son’s second birthday, I wanted to do a special cake. Normally I like cake decorating, but today… it wasn’t sounding super fun. I quickly dismissed the Big Bird cake (which I had for my second birthday) and the SpongeBob Squarepants cake; they both were too much work. Cupcakes, which are my normal fallback, weren’t sounding too fabulous either, since my daughter requested them for her birthday last week.

Enter: The Monster Jam cake. Are you ready?

Really, REALLY ready?

I started out by opening up Spencer Nugent’s Monster Jam Sticker Pack kit. I dragged each of the elements on to a new canvas, which I sized to 13″x13″. (If you have a regular sized printer, just keep your file at the standard 8.5″x11″.) I didn’t do any resizing of the monsters, so they were all in the 3-4″ tall range.

Next, I printed it out onto cardstock. I used Staples brand Photo Supreme paper, which is a double-sided matte paper. I love this paper, and use it to print out my layouts, prints that I sell on Etsy, plus various other projects. I cut out the monsters, leaving a small white border around each one. That’s a lie. I cut out about three, and then enlisted a helper. I didn’t even have to pay her, because she thought it was fun!

I frosted my cake with regular cream cheese frosting, which I actually pulled out of my freezer. (I told you I was feeling lazy! I didn’t even frost it that well, because I knew I would be covering it up.) Next, I pulled out some fondant.

If I just freaked you out, keep reading. Fondant is the easiest way to decorate your cakes, I promise. It’s like playing with Play-Doh, minus the funky smell. Fondant does have that traditional funky taste, though. Most people just pull it off and don’t eat it, but I have found a few good ones. You can make Marshmallow Fondant; it’s relatively easy with common ingredients. It can be messy though, so keep that in mind. I prefer to just buy mine, and keep it in the freezer. I like Choco-Pan, myself, since it tastes like chocolate!

Where was I? Oh, yes, pulling out fondant. I mixed in some food coloring to match the fondant to my monsters, and then went to work rolling them out. I cut out circles in three different sizes, using the ends of my metal decorating tips.

I let the circles dry for a bit and enlisted more help, this time to roll some pea-sized fondant balls. (My husband actually requested this photo, to prove how accomodating he was!)

Next, we put the monsters on. Literally just slapped them on, because my two-year-old was really excited to help. We added the fondant balls around the bottom of the cake by pushing them slightly into the still-soft frosting, and added the circles randomly on top of the cake. (Again, with help from the birthday boy.)

The Monster Jam cake took about 45 minutes to decorate; not bad, if I do say so myself! The finished product:

So, think about what you’ve got on your hard drive, and what you’ve got going on in your life. What can you do with your digital kits?

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Tags: Digital Cake Decorating, Digital Scrapbooking, Gennifer Bursett, Hybrid Project, Inspiration, Printing Digital Projects