Archives: Tomie dePaola Award

Winning The Tomie dePaola Award Experience

I’m had a great time at the SCBWI Winter conference in NYC. It’s been so nice to meet up with old friends and make new friends too! But I must say the highlight of my whole weekend was to have lunch with the very talented and generous Illustrator Tomie dePaola.

Every year Tomie puts out a prompt for illustrators to create a piece of artwork for a competition through the SCBWI. This year’s prompt was to illustrate a lovely poem that was written by Lin Oliver. She is one of the founders of the SCBWI. I was honored to win this award. SCBWI paid for my travel and conference and also the lunch with Tomie (which is a new addition this year).

We had a lovely lunch. I will really cherish this day! It was so nice to just be in the presence of someone that has been in this industry for over 50 years. He has over 250 books and is well respected in the children’s book world.

Here Tomie was showing a little girl that was sitting next to us during lunch,
his Brava Strega Nona heartwarming pop-up book

Below I’ve added a few photos of us and a cake that I brought to the conference all the way from Texas. It is a Margarita cake, buttercream icing, fondant with polymer clay characters on top. I created the characters in clay because I knew the fondant would not travel well. This one happily made it to Tomie’s studio in New Hampshire.

  
  
 
Steve Mooser, President, SCBWI and Lin Oliver, Executive Director, SCBWI
Announcing the winner of the 2014 Tomie dePaola Award

Lin, Tomie and I

Below Tomie is showing my daughter his pop-up book and signing many other books

I would encourage other illustrators to enter the SCBWI Tomie dePaola’s competition.
Thank you 🙂 and Good Luck Illustrators!

 

Tomie dePaola Competition Entry

Here is my entry to this years SCBWI  Tomie dePaola competition. We were assigned a poem to illustrate for a potential book to be pitched to parents of toddlers and young preschoolers.

The ball of the illustration is a yellow cake. The elephant, mouse, and background are made with fondant and gum-paste. My favorite part of this cake is the mouse’s whiskers, they are made of isomalt.(sugar)

I have been so busy making cakes that I really haven’t had time to draw. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been creating. I wanted to blog about how creating designer cakes is an art. I have been making cakes since I was in high school, but had not really used fondant or other sugar cake products until recently. It has been so much fun to see what I can come up with.

I love to bake!!! My children are a bit spoiled because there is always something homemade to munch on at our house. It’s amazing we don’t all weigh 300 pounds.

I started making cakes for friends and families as gifts when I went to their parties. My kid’s friends started requesting cakes from me. I’ve had so many request I had to start charging. My illustrator friend Carolyn Flores suggested I make my illustrations out of cake. What a great idea! I really enjoy the process and the final outcome. Many people can’t believe that cakes can me made into so many shapes.

Recently Texas passed a law that bakers could sell from their homes. I took the online class and now have the certificates, so I guess I’m now an official home baker. Send me your orders! 🙂

Here are some of the most recent cakes that I have made: