Fly fly ladybug.

My aunt and uncle's church was having a bake sale. Of course they knew the right person to call to make a cake and cupcakes. It was a rough start but I devoted all of Saturday to finishing it all up. You should have seen the mess in the new kitchen. I got the idea from a decorating book my sister Louie got me for Christmas.

Planet Cake by Paris Cutler: A beginner's guide to decorating incredible cakes

There are plenty of really amazing ideas in here. Most of the cakes are beautiful because of the use of fondant (can anyone really ever go wrong using that stuff?) But for the cupcakes/cake I made I used buttercream mostly and just decorated a little with fondant. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the step by step process because my camera was packed in an unknown box and I couldnt find it, but here is the end result.

These little guys were right from the book. Just your regular vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream (dyed black with food coloring). I got the circle cutters in cascading sizes. I cut the red fondant with the biggest circle cutter and then cut out the head by using the same circle cutter. Then using a knife I cut the circle in half and placed it on the cupcake like shown. I then dyed white fondant black and used the smallest cuttero make the dots. I used raw spaghetti as the antennas and put little balls of the black fondant on the ends. Small white balls as the eyes. Once that dried then I put the black pupil using a food coloring marker.

Tada!

The cake itself is a bit more simple. I wanted it to match the cupcakes. It is the chocolate mud cake from the Planet Cake book. Very tasty! I covered it in red, vanilla buttercream and smoothed it out. Then I cut out varying sized spots in black. Around the bottom edge I used a large circle tip for the border. This was simple but it went very well with the cupcakes.

Isn't it adorable?!?!?! I'm very happy about how it turned out.