Big Red Barn Cake

This big red barn cake was made for a little boy's 3rd birthday!  It is a yellow sheet cake decorated with red, white, black, yellow, pink, brown, and green buttercream icing. 

A lot of times I get an initial idea in my head of what I want a cake to look like and when I start decorating the idea grows.  For example, on this cake I sent an initial sketch to the mom of a red barn with a cow peeking through open barn doors.  As I started decorating, I decided it would be fun to dig out the window and the opening ot the barn to give the cake some dimension from which I could build out the chicken sitting on a hay stack and the cow peeking out the door.  Once I had two animals, I figured I had to have a barnyard dog and the tree just seemed like a good idea to have near a barn. 
Thus, cake decorating is a very organic process for me that grows as the cake take shape.  This is why I offer an initial estimate for the cost and then a final cost when the cake is finished because if I think the cake needs more detail I'm going to add what I think it needs. 

The cost of this cake was:
Icing: $2.55 x 3 batches: $7.65 (1 red, .5 black, .5 green, .25 yellow, .5 white and pink, .25 brown, )
Cake: $1.93 x 2 = $3.86
Wrapping: $4.88
Labor: $6 x 5 hours = $30
Total: $46.39