10/02/2026
The power of voodoo
Who do?
You do.
Let's make a cake!
For this art show, I wanted to bring together a place I love, a little spooky inspiration, and a story worth telling. Naturally, Marie Laveau had to make an appearance. ⚜️🔮
The base is an oak tree, native to Nola
It's a Styrofoam dummy with fondant to create the raw shape.
Next, I used royal icing. One of my favorite and most versatile mediums to use. I created a very thick icing to replicate the texture of bark, let it dry slightly and roughed it up before it dried to give it a realistic look.
Now, starts the fun part. Airbrushing.
It has to be done in multiple layers with different colors to really sell it as a tree. You can't just go straight in with brown.
I started with yellow, then a touch of orange before starting the brown.
I went in the grooves with a darker color to create dimension. Nothing in the 3D world is one color. Creating shades and shadows makes object look more realistic.
Here we're starting to look like an actual trunk, I added red, green a darker brown and black to get all the tones I wanted.
I noticed it was a little darker than I wanted so I went back over it with a layer of yellow to lighten it a bit.
Tinting sugar cookie dough green, baking it and crumbling it up makes a perfect moss.
To add more dimension, I airbrushed the moss in multiple shades of green.
A close-up on the skull💀
The finished product in the gallery.
The challenge for this art show was to create a piece that featured a room in the Woodmere Museum with whatever spooky element you wanted.
I chose a small room off the main gallery to draw inspo from and added black New Orleans culture with a tribute to Madam Laveau herself🖤
The show featured many cake artists from the Philadelphia area and was on display for a week. What an honor to always be a part of the cool things going on in my city.
