Matching birthday cake & dress

I saw this cute dress at Target when my daughter was 9 months old. I bought it knowing that I was going to have her wear it for her 12 month old photos. I thought the design was so cute that it would be perfect to match a cake to her dress for the photo shoot. I did a "practice cake" a month before- and i'm glad I did it. I learned A LOT from it- like not to use buttercream for the brush embroidery effect, not to fold the fondant for the sash (I ended up just overlaying 3 different sizes of the sash on the final cake), and that it was easier to level and tort the cake when it had been cooled in the refrigerator first.

This is the "Practice" cake and the filling- guava cake with guava gel filling (this was also the first time I tried this recipe-it basically was white cake mix with guava nectar substituted for the water. It wasn't all that great.)

And the actual cake we used for my daughter's 1 year old photos:




Oh, and here is one of the photos of my daughter with her cake: