I would be flattered to see someone replicate one of my original designs! How exciting is it that someone loved your cake so much?!

This is the cake I made after watching your tutorial. Thank you for sharing your amazing designs with us.

I copyed your cake. Though you did put it in a book with amazing instructions ! So thank you! Not too bad for a hobby baker.

Thank you for the pointers and the wonderful videos. I will be teaching my niece cake decorating soon and want her to watch these.

Ann..I just watched your video about copying a cake. About giving credit to the original designer.
What about the artists that copy established characters
such as Snoopy from Peanuts, Barbie, Hello Kitty, race car, camera, wine bottle, just to name a few?
I also have molds and cookie cutters of these. How and When do we give the proper to the original designer or owner. Is any of these illegal to use?

LOVE your videos! I appreciate your good advice. The “copying” issue has always bothered me. When customers bring in or send photos of cakes they want, I always ask them to pick their favorite features to keep, but work with me to create a cake that’s unique for them. Sometimes, they just want a copy. Darnit! I use watermarking (posting a photo one of my ORIGINAL designs), but what to do if there is no way to credit the original designer? When I post my pictures, should I add “Not an original design” or something similar? What else can be done? THANK YOU!!!!

Always love the information you give us. It is very helpful. I thank you for your professionalism and all your advise.

What about when you search for the theme of a cake and you may find different takes on it so you combine and through in you own ideas should you try to mention however many you combine to the design ?
Thanks.
PS, I never sell my cakes I only make them for my family.

Some designs are just hard not to replicate, like, a ‘crayon box’ cake (I guess you figured out I recently did a crayon box cake). However, I like the idea of crediting the person whose picture you used so I’ll keep that in mind for future “Can you make this cake” orders. 🙂

Great vid! Love your work Kristen!;)

I think the longer we’re in business the less worried we are about this but you bring up a good point and I need to get better about this. It is important to credit people especially if they have a really unusual style. When people are also teaching their techniques it does become important to get credit for their work.

We did a fun lots of the rings themed cake last year and the bride was really sweet and thought our work had been credited to someone else, but it turned out to be an employee. So there is a whole other set of rules to consider when you hire people about how you want them to share their pictures of their work!

I totally copied a design of one of your cakes, BUT I contacted you and received permission first. The one place I did post a picture of it, I made sure to give you credit and I continue to give you credit on the design. Sometimes recreating the art work of another person translates to “I hope I am able to recreate this well enough not embarrass the original designer.” 🙂
Here is my comment on my post about the cake…
“I made this for my bosses birthday. I was looking for something different and came across Wicked Goodies Koi Fish. She had a wonderful tutorial on her blog about how to make this fish. Thanks for the inspiration Kristen!”

A major cake competition I attended last fall wanted to see pictures of the inspiration for the cakes competitors made. Sometimes it was an object, sometimes it was another cake from which they made their own competition cake. But it was an inspiration and required for that class of the competition.
People want what others have. They see someone’s cake and decide they want it. Just like clothes, shoes, a purse, whatever it is, they want it to so they can feel special, too. That might be a photo of a cake made half way around the world. Now they want it for their special day. What do you do, say, “No, you have to go to that cake maker and get permission first. Good luck with that. They’ll just go to the next baker until they find one that will make it. Watermark, copyright, label and date your work. That way it can at least be traced back to who made it first.

Funny story… for some reason it is trendy among my family and friends in Egypt to accompany their happy birthday posts to each other with a picture of a random cake. None of these cakes are actually made by any of the posters. But it’s pretty ubiquitous to post these pictures of cakes whenever you’re wishing someone happy birthday on Facebook. Anyway I didn’t think much of it until one day I found that one of my cousins wished happy birthday to another one of my cousins on their timeline accompanied by a picture of one of my cakes! Now the funny thing is this cake wasn’t made for either one of them —I had made this cake for my nanny—but somehow they had seen it and saved to their computer. After that I started watermarking my pictures. I don’t think they even realized it was a cake I had made. Anyway here’s a picture of the cake and yes it is topped by a flower that I learned how to do from your book about modeling chocolate.