First Fun with Fondant

I have, for a while now, been really interested in learning how to decorate/make beautifully designed cakes...especially using fondant....I know it tastes like crap but it does make for a beautiful cake!

I have not taken a single class or ever done it before but I thought I would just take a wack at it and see what happened. So yesterday I headed over to Michaels to buy the necessities....nothing special...just the fondant, baking pans and a cut out....I didn't want to buy too much because if my experience/first run failed, I didn't want to have a bunch of supplies left over that wouldn't be used much again.

So here is my first attempt...
Last night I baked the cakes so I wouldn't have to wait for them to cool before placing the fondant....I used Wilton colored powder and pure lemon extract to change the color of the pure white fondant (next time I would use gel food coloring, but I didn't have any and I was just winging it....and it seemed to work out!) I actually had a lot of fun blending the color into the fondant...it was like having adult play dough!
I am smoothing out the fondant
Now I am cutting off the excess fondant at the base of the cake
After placing the blue fondant down, I blended in red coloring into the fondant, rolled it out and used a star cookie cutter to get star shaped fondant pieces.
The project/baking experience was a bit messy!
Placing the stars on the cake...I used water to adhere the stars to the base fondant.
The stars in place....and actually before I even put the stars down, I rolled out the red fondant and cut a strip about 1 inch thick and wrapped it all the way around the base of the cake....If there were any imperfections, I placed a blue star over the thin red strip of fondant...fortunately they are very evenly spread apart!
The next task was to make a bow and place it right in the middle of the cake....I knew this was going to be tough as I have never done it before and I was just winging it...but I hoped that I could make it work. Well....I attempted it but wasn't even close to satisfied with the results....
I removed all the pieces of the bow.....rolled the 3 colors of the bow together to get a multicolored piece of fondant...
I actually really liked the way the multicolored fondant looked and decided to use the star cookie cutters to decorate the rest of the cake.
I started by placing a large star cut out right in the middle...and ended with....
I actually think it came out pretty well for not ever having done one before, never having taken a class and not having any instructions (except for how to stack the cakes). And now that I have made my first attempt, I know that next time I could make one that is 100 times better.

Next time I would bake 2 more cakes making the cake taller....I would also place the cakes upside down instead of right side up so that the top of the cake is flat and not rounded. I would also use a knife to trim the base of the cake to make the shape of the cake more whimsical looking (kind of like a mad hatter hat). I also would make sure to have the food coloring gel and not use quite as much water for adhering the pieces to the fondant....and of course...I now plan to take a class! It was actually a really fun activity!