To the left is a page of the first designs I thought up with some added notes on the sides about what could be added to the design or what might be needed. I know that my drawing skills leave a lot to be desired but it helped to have some ideas down on paper.
To the right is another hand drawn design, but this one ended up being what I decided to follow. I used a round cake instead of a square one like in my original planning because I thought it looked better (and I had more round cake pans to work with). I also starting thinking about colors and what types of animals I wanted to include, and while it doesn't look exactly the same as the finished design, it's pretty close.
After I had my idea of what I wanted to do, I needed to start researching and learning how to actually accomplish my plans. This took a long time, longer than I thought it would honestly. There was just so much to learn. It was hard at times but I stuck with it. I read through books, watched YouTube videos, and spent hours on Pinterest looking at different ideas.
These are just a couple of the twenty or more screenshots I took of ideas I found while searching for ideas. I looked at pictures for each of my original theme ideas and then I had to decide which one would be the best suited to my skill set. I decided on the jungle theme. These pictures were really helpful to look at while I was making my own monkey and lions.