PATTERNED TILE DESIGN

Let’s chat Instagram—a wealth of inspiration, am I right?!

I recently started following a custom tile company, which posts videos of their team painting tiles. It is so epic to watch—the designs and lines are incredibly inspiring. (If you want to check them out, they are @fireclaytile . . . the videos are so satisfying!!)

Once I focus on something that inspires me, I start to notice it everywhere I go. I had been planning a tile design for a while, just waiting for the right tile inspiration and customer that I could convince to let me create it for them. I actually did a Spanish blocking tile design a while back for a styled shoot. It was this vibrant deep blue and white and the design went straight up the middle of the cake. The tiers went blue, white, blue and the tiles were opposite colours to the tier—so the blue tiers had white tiles and white tier had blue tiles.

But back to the current cake. I saw these tiles at a cafe in Mount Maunganui called Eddies and Elspeth. Of course I was that weirdo crouching down at the counter taking photos of their tiles. I have no shame anymore when it comes to inspiration and taking photos! As you can see in the mood board, the tiles are a mixture of charcoal, light blue and off-white. If you single out one tile it has four corners to it, with the design in each corner matching up to the design on the next tile.

My plan was to single out one full design, centred on one tile, rather than piecing the tile corners together as they have done here. To me it looks like there are two designs here, and I wanted to focus on just one . . . I wanted each tile to be a stand-alone.

Having singled out my tile design, I asked my friends at Peg Creative to make me a stencil out of thin plastic, which they can laser-cut with their fancy machines. I could then use the stencils with ganache to transfer the tile design onto the cake.

My initial plan was that the pattern would be a line of tiles ringing the middle of each tier. Once I had stencilled the design onto the cake, I wanted to paint each tile design in a gold metallic paint. The rest of the finish for the cake would be a textured stone in white/ivory.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to add flowers to this cake; sometimes I need to stand back and look at the design before I know if it needs the addition of something more. I was thinking that if I did choose to do flowers I would use some preserved roses. I already had a box of freeze-dried roses that I got from Simply Roses in Australia, in a beautiful ivory colour. I bought them on a whim, not knowing what I would use them for.

As soon as I remembered those flowers I decided that they must be incorporated into the design. The tricky decision would be placement. Maybe something a little different, and have them sitting on the front edge of each tier . . . You will have to skip ahead to the finished design to see what I decided to do, as even I didn’t know until it came to the day.

DESIGN DEBRIEF

Another favourite: classic and old-fashioned, but not in a cringe way. Romantic but a little edgy. It isn’t at all what I intended for it, though—which is typical of what I do when I design. I do stay true to the base guidelines. I’ve used the tiles, although I knew after I sketched the cake that they would work better around the top of each tier. Instead of having textured ganache I’ve kept it smooth and sharp-as-shit. I don’t feel like this was a conscious decision . . . maybe it was an accident or an oversight? Anyway, it was a happy change in the design as I think it offsets the raised tile pattern perfectly.

I did try to paint the tile pattern with gold but abandoned that idea when I fell in love with the subtleness of the tile pattern on its own. The roses, though. Oh my, the roses! Something about the colour of them just felt right against the ganache. I went for my classic diagonal arrangement, but kept it off-centre so as not to dominate the subtle tile design. As I was placing the roses, some of the petals fluttered down, and one petal caught on the edge of the ganached tile. As I looked at it, sitting there separate from the cluster, I took its lead and added more separate petals at random. I even made use of the empty buds with just the stamens showing. This cake was such a process, and I almost felt like it appeared in front of me complete. IN LOVE.