A friend of mine picked out some very cute doggie-themed nursery bedding for her new son William's pending arrival. It's chambray blue with brown corduroy trim, and has puppies on it doing various activities. When I was asked to make the cake for her shower, I asked if I could pick out the design of it, and she said yes! Yahoo! I wanted the cake to match the bedding and thought I would make the cake look like the matching diaper bag - except there doesn't seem to BE a matching diaper bag. Um, okay, I'll just have to wing it a little.
Here are the tools I used for this particular cake: two spatulas, one tapered and one rounded; paring knife; mini pizza cutter; pastry brush for cleaning up; cheapie semi-disposable plastic bench scraper; tracing wheel from the fabric store; dual pastry wheel; Wilton cutter/embosser; small rolling pin; clay extruder fitted with a medium-sized circle die; and a garrett frill cutter with the center circle removed. I also had a food-safe mold of a zipper and zipper pull. I made my zipper mold using a jacket zipper and the molding compounds found at makeyourownmolds.com. If you don't have all of these things, don't worry. Roll out the chocolate fondant ropes by hand if you don't have a clay or fondant extruder, use a round cookie cutter if you don't have a garrett frill cutter, etc. Look at the photos and see where you can improvise for the items you don't already own.