Sandon’s 23rd birthday octopus cake

The pictures below show details of my process better than I can explain in words, but I’ll try. I began by baking 3 boxes of red velvet cake in 2 9-inch round pans and a large muffin pan. I then colored my cream cheese frosting for the sand and water layers of my cake. I used a small plate as a guide to carve one of the layers into a smaller tier. The excess cake I cut away was later used to create the tentacles. I cut of the tops of two cake muffins and stuck them together, top to top, securing them to each other and the cake with bamboo skewers. I hand-colored and rolled my fondant to cover the octopus head and tentacles, and glued mint life savers onto the tentacles with frosting for the suckers. The octopus’s eyes are also fondant, and Swedish Fish swim in the water tier around the sea creature. The sand tier is yellow colored frosting with yellow sprinkles for a sand-like texture, and the water tier is blue colored frosting that has been peaked with a cake knife spatula. Everything that went into this cake is store bought, but I felt like the process of putting this cake together was more important than baking the whole thing from scratch like I normally would.