Handbag cake - preparations

For a very special person's birthday I have decided to make a handbag cake. Last night I baked the cake and today I started to prepare it.
First I had to cut the cake into sections and then put it back together in a handbag shape, using icing to stick it all together. I'm not 100% happy with how the shape has turned out but I show a friend a photo of it today, and she knew it was a handbag, so I guess that is a plus!!

The next lot of preparation I had to do was for the add-ons to go on the bag - such as the handles, and some letters. So I have used black fondant (I purchased it black, so I didn't have to worry about tinting it), rolled it out fairly thin (not too thin for the handles), and then used a cutter to cut out strips, and a stitching tool to put in stitch maks. I also used a great set of Snap-It letters to cut out my friend's name (and some other random letters to put in my little box of random fondant things).

So the next thing to do will be to cover the cake with pink fondant (which I prepared today) and add the decorations and details. I'm also going to add a zip, so I'll be trying out some gold shimmer paint out and I'm really looking forwad to testing it! Hopefully I'll have it ready for Thursday and hopefully it stays together and doesn't fall over - I have put skewers in to secure it.