After I took part in RSPCA's Cupcake Day, I suddenly got a few people very [legitimately] interested in purchasing some cupcakes for themselves. Ever since I started getting more seriously into cake decorating, I have had a myriad of offers and requests about purchasing, but they always fell through for one reason or another.

So I find it amusing how, now when I am doing a Masters degree and barely have time to cook dinner every night, I suddenly have an influx of orders! The lady this one was for is a colleague of my boyfriend's — she was especially generous in both her donation and support for the RSPCA fundraiser, so I just wanted to find the time to make sure I could do this for her.

The brief was for 18 spring-themed cupcakes. With the choc hazelnut icing from the RSPCA Cupcakes. The rest was up to me. It's the first time I've had a cupcake request based solely on the icing!

So after much contemplation, fretting and indecision, I decided on lady birds, bees and flowers.

I also bought these adorable patty pans from my favourite cake decorating store, Cake Deco – I was going for a picnic blanket sort of look;

I feel like these guys need speech bubbles, but I'm not creative enough to think of any quirky text to add – not after a day of Biometry, anyway!

Making the little faces of fondant figures is always so much fun, but so stressful – if you can't get the face right the whole thing looks terrible and it will ruin the most skilful of fondant work. I had a few hit and misses with the eyes at first, which is why they look so grotty on the bees, which I did first. But I think I was able to rescue them enough to drag them back to the realm of cuteness.

I did 6 cupcakes with bees, 6 with lady birds and 6 with flowers. Pretty sure you can't tell, but the centre of the flowers are buttons. I had lots of fun marbling the fondant for the leaves. I love the randomness of marbling and the unique looks it can give you.

For the bases, I made half of the cupcakes mud choc and the other half butter cake.

Time to box them up! I just love cupcakes boxes, don't you?

I got two with heart-shaped windows, just to be even more ridiculously cutesy!

While I think I will always find a million things to fault [like the piping – I broke my favourite tip in a ridiculously overzealous poking move with the handle of a wooden spoon so had to default to the next available] I didn't have the feeling of embarrassment that I did with my first commission. I was mainly worried it might be too cutesy and girly for a corporate office.

The recipient apparently loved them [PHEW!], so that was really lovely.