Cue Graduation Theme...

I can't even think of what the graduation theme is. Whenever I try to think of it, I'm pretty sure it's Dark Vader's theme from Star Wars. I know, I'm weird.

Well, last night was our graduation from our cake decorating class. It has been fun and informative, but A LOT of work. I do NOT want to make another batch of icing to save my life.

So, for our last class, we learned how to write on cakes and make ribbon flowers. Both of which will require A LOT more practice than we got last night. The rest of the night was spent on decorating a cake.

We were told that we could decorate our cake however we wanted to, we just needed to bring whatever we needed. This is how I went about preparing for my cake.

1) I thought about it. What did I want the theme to be? They had a bunch of cakes you could do in the book, but I didn't like any of those so I decided to venture out on my own. Eureka! It's almost Halloween, I'll do a Halloween themed cake.

2) I thought of a cute way to make pumpkins be the border of the cake.

3) Since the dimensional piping was my favorite thing to learn, I decided to use that on the cake. So, I took out my trusty PrintShop program and found some great Halloween-y things that I wanted to put on the cake.

4) Then Brent helped me with this spooky tree I wanted to put on the cake. (It was a lot of work and he was so patient...he's great!)

5) I made my icing to exact specifications. (The gray of the cake did not turn out exactly how I wanted it to, but it was my first time using the black coloring. It's a pain. There's a stain on my rug to prove it.)

6) I decorated my cake. Drum roll please....

And the pumpkin border...
I have to say, I love the pumpkin border. It came out exactly how it was suppose to!

(Again, these were taken with my cell phone camera, which doesn't love to do close ups, but I was afraid it would get damaged on the way home.)

I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. It's not exactly how I planned. And there are a few things that bug me when I look at it - why do all the pumpkins tilt the same way - but for my first try at designing and decorating my own cake, I think I did well.

To contrast my obsessive compulsive, control freak way of designing cakes, this is how Marcela designed her cake.

1) She knew she wanted to put flowers on it.

2) She made some icing.

3) She decorated her cake.

And here it is....

Another fine example of a beautiful cake.

I just chuckled at the differences in our personalities.

Our teacher was trying really hard to get us to take the next class in the group. It's mostly royal icing flowers, which I'm pretty sure is my mom's favorite thing in the world. There's no way I can take it until the new year, so we'll see.