I first saw the idea of a cake smash on a random photography
website when Doof was only a few months old (I can’t even remember which one)
but I instantly thought it looked so cool and so saved up the idea for when he
was turning one.
So here is a combination of what I read, what I did and tips
for anyone else thinking of doing a cake smash… (more tips can be found here)
The cake
A pretty crucial part of the whole “cake smash” is obviously
the cake. I decided pretty early on I wanted to do a multi-coloured cake as
firstly I was making a rainbow cake for Doof’s actual birthday so thought it
would tie in nicely and secondly I thought it would look good in photos with lots
of different colours.
I used the same recipe as for Doof’s birthday cake but
instead of making separate layers I make a double layers with chunks of
different colours. I then iced it with pale blue buttercream and sprinkled it
with lots of 100s & 1000s. I also had a large “1” candle which provided a
bit of a focal point and something for Doof to pick up and play with.
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| Two layers of cake in the oven |
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| Finished cake ready for smashing :) |
The setting
The two main things we had to consider were practicality and
lighting. Lighting was pretty much a problem wherever we were indoors as it was
a dull autumn day with not much sunshine. But from a practical point of view
the best place to do it was at one end of the sitting room.
So I set up a little “stage area” consisting of a tablecloth
draped over the back of two chairs, with the light from French windows behind
me as I was taking photos. I picked a light blue tablecloth (my choices were
slightly limited as I left that bit pretty late to organise!) and we happened
to have that already at home. It also made clean up easy as we just shook the crumbs off outside and then put it in the washing machine.
I discounted using a white one because of the
colour of Doof’s outfit but if he had been in a coloured vest I think a
white backdrop with a coloured cake could’ve looked really good. I also
discounted using any kind of shiny surface (like plastic disposable
tablecloths) as these would reflect the light in weird ways.
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| Blue tablecloth forming the backdrop and floor |
The camera
We’ve got a DSLR which was perfect for shooting an indoor
cake smash as to get the best results you really do need to be able to fiddle
with the shutter speed, ISO, lighting etc. As the lighting wasn’t amazing I
ended up shooting with a fast shutter speed (so there was no blur), kept the
f-stop high and used a bounced flash diffuser (to avoid over-whitening the skin/having
red eye but adding a bit more light to the mix).
If you have a large overhead light that could also help (we
didn’t) and if shooting on a bright summer’s day rather than a dull October
afternoon I imagine light might not be so much of an issue.
Try and take a mixture of full body shots and close ups and move around during the shoot to get different angles - although to be honest this is much easier said than done as a cake smash can last only a few minutes (and some of that may well be spent depositing the baby back in front of the cake!). For all these reasons having someone else on hand to help was really helpful. It's also nice to have a picture of the cake pre-smash and at the very end.
The outfit
If you google “cake smash outfit” or if you put it into a
site like Etsy there are a million suggestions. I wanted something quite simple
but nice and also that made it obvious that Doof was one. On Etsy I found the
perfect thing:
I love the cat in the hat, loved how simple and cute it was
and even though it came from Canada the service was super quick and despite me
having to order another size (Canadian babies are obviously a lot larger than English
babies as Doof still wears the 6-12 month size one now!) both arrived only a
few days after ordering. I would definitely order more things from MySunshineDesigns
in the future.
The date/time
We deliberately didn’t do this on Doof’s birthday. Some
people like to have a mini cake smash during the actual birthday party but we
decided to have them on completely separate days – that way we could have fun
smashing cake without worrying about anything else and could then enjoy
celebrating his birthday with friends without mess and chaos everywhere!
So Doof had his cake smash 2 days before his birthday –
another benefit was we could do it at the weekend so both me and his dad could
be there (definitely a bonus for me having an extra pair of hands to help!!).
We did it on a Sunday afternoon and timed it for after his
afternoon nap – around 3pm. That way worked perfectly for us as he wasn’t
tired and had just had a beaker of milk (my attempt at preventing him from
going on a complete sugar-induced-rampage as I thought letting a hungry baby
loose on a icing-rich cake might be asking for trouble…).
The "after" plan
Have a clean-up plan in place before you start… I ran a
really hot bath before we started which meant by the time Doof had had his fill
of smashing it had cooled to a nice temperature and was ready for him to be
dunked straight in. Definitely an advantage of doing a smash at home rather than
outside in a park etc was the proximity of a bathroom! Although to be honest
Doof didn’t actually get that messy so we could have just used a handful of
wipes – but you never know which baby is going to be the crazy super messy one…
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| Nice warm bubblebath and a lovely clean baby :) |
The final verdict:
Doof was much more delicate than I thought he would be and
needed some encouragement to get started but it was so much fun to do – both the
preparation and then watching him have fun.
Would I change anything next time? I think I might use more
icing (and maybe top it with some whipped cream as that would be much easier to
smash/make a mess with) and also get him to taste some icing at the start so he
knows it is something nice to eat. Doof had never eaten cake before so wasn’t
sure what it was/what to do with it to start with. I'd also leave purple out of the cake as that looked quite dark and boring in the photos.
We will definitely do it again for his second birthday – I imagine
that will be a LOT more messy! Come back in October 2014 to see what happened…
If any of you have done a cake smash already, or are
planning one, I’d love to hear more and maybe pick up some more tips for the
next one :)
Lovely idea - the colours are so vivid on the sponge!
ReplyDeleteAww thank you! I think next time I would miss purple out as that one was quite dark but overall I was so happy with how it turned out :)
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