A couple of special cakes

These two cakes I have had on the books for months! It's nice to know that someone loves these people enough to think about them that far in advance.
The smiley face cake has such a sweet story. Without sharing the personal story of my client, the smiley face makes the groom smile in remembrance, so she chose that as a theme. It was a HUGE smile, 14 inches round. Then we added chocolate covered strawberries, three pints of them! I love California strawberries this time of year, they're so HUGE and sweet. There were so many I couldn't put them all on the board so I sent them with my client. She bought this cake as a gift, so I'm hoping that it went over well with the bride and groom, I love cakes with meaning.
The 2nd cake I did this weekend was inspired by a cake that the client found online. I'd love to give credit where credit is due, but I don't know who the original decorator was. Originally, I purchased a mold for the topper, but found it was WAY too small. So..I got out my handy dandy $1 knife from Pampered Chef and some fondant and went at it, and I must say, I'm pretty proud of my eagle! I used my consultant's advice and put the blue background (that would be Sarah) under the eagle to make him pop some. The name and all I honestly admit I wasn't sure about, but it's how the original cake was, and I wound up liking it. I WAS wishing Sharon was here (my buddy at SugarEd) to roll my fondant, but I was pleased with how this cake came out all together, and my client seemed to like it also. GOTTA love the airbrush for colors like this, no way could I have gotten a clean fondant job if I had kneaded all that color into my fondant.
So...on to the pictures, which is what we know you really wanted anyway right?

My smile (that made me smile):

And a retirement cake for a man who CERTAINLY deserved a cake!! Praise God for our men and women in the military,
they deserve SO much!

And..a little gripe...and warning for my caking friends. I used Pettinice for this cake. I opened a FRESH sealed package of it, to find 1/4 of it was dried out and hard and crusty. I thought I cut all of it out, but there were hard pebbles still in it that caused me NIGHTMARES, so, I'm off of Pettinice for a while if this is what it's going to do.