Beach Cake

My niece, Ellah, wanted a beach theme for her birthday.   She asked for a cake that looked like a sand castle.  I wish we kept the picture she drew for us of what she wanted it to look like.  It was really close to the sand castle on this cake.  She just wanted it to be 3 layers, no towers or anything, and have a couple sea shells on it and a flag.  Kate finally talked her into having a beach scene and adding her pathetic sand castle to it.  She agreed.  The palm trees are rice krispy treats with caramel and chopped up pretzels on the outside.  We used sugar paper for the leaves.  The sand is a mixture of white and brown sugar and then we torched it to try to get it to stay in place.  Which worked pretty well, but it was still a little messy.  All the shells and beach things white fondant and then painted with food coloring.  I wish I would have gotten some close up pictures of the beach things because they actually turned out pretty well.  I wanted the water to look like water so we tried candy.  I think the look is what I wanted, I would just want to figure out something different for next time. I covered the cake with fondant first and then poured the candy over.  It was still a little too hot and melted the fondant in a couple places.