As a child, artist Carrie Smith loved decorating cakes for family members’ birthdays. Her love for cake-decorating was second only to her love of art.
In December 2016, while working in her Clearwater, Florida, studio, Smith discovered a way to combine her two childhood loves — painting and cake-decorating — and that’s how her “Frosted Collection” was born.
Smith has now created more than 50 pieces of art using piped oil paint that looks, deliciously, like frosting. Her fans love the results, and she has over 8,000 followers on Instagram.
“As soon as I started posting videos of my process to Instagram I was gaining a lot of followers per week,” Smith said in 2017. “I believe my Instagram fam was mesmerized just as much as I was. This process is super satisfying to watch and even more so to make.”
It is definitely satisfying to watch! You can witness some of her creative piping process in this YouTube video:
Smith grew up drawing and painting, and earned an art degree from Ohio University before setting out as a working artist in 2014. She said her love of sculpting led her to explore three-dimensional oil panting, and she’s applied her 3-D piping technique to cubes and canvases for different effects.
Smith’s process starts with choosing the paint colors and the cake-decorating tip she’s going to use. She mixes the colors, and then places them into pastry bags.
“When I scoop the paint into the pastry bag I have to make sure it lines the bag just right,” she said. “The placement of the colors is key.” And looking at her work, it’s easy to see why getting the colors placed just-so matters.
Once complete, Smith said her pieces would take about three to five days to dry. But the biggest challenge, she said, is running out of paint.
“As you can imagine, this process uses a lot of medium and I wish I had an unlimited supply of it,” Smith said. “For those interested in trying this process, it’s expensive but the end results are phenomenal!”
These days, Smith seems to be focusing more on realistic portraiture and less on frosting-paint creations. She sells her work online, so check out available pieces on her website or inquire about getting customized portraits.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
