Decorating a Table Cake

I've seen some really awesome cakes around that looked like tables set for tea--one in particular that looks like it cake straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Though I'm nowhere near that good with my gumpaste molding yet, so making an edible tea set is out, I thought I'd take the general idea and give it a little twist for Mother's Day. First, I baked my lemon poppy seed cake in 6" round pans, frosted and filled it with vanilla buttercream.

Then after I colored my fondant, I rolled it out and covered the cake. I had to do a bit of trimming--I rolled it large enough to have it hang down all the way around so I could trim as needed. I love this cake design because the fondant naturally wants to hang in waves, just like a tablecloth would, so it was super easy!

Next, I set this aside and rolled out a chunk of white fondant. I used a dinner plate to cut a perfect circle big enough for fondant that size to hang down the sides of the cake an inch or two. then I used a toothpick to mark the edges of the circle so the circumfrence was divided into fourths, then I added two more lines between the quarters so I'd have a dozen semi-even sections. This wasn't perfect--If I had it to do again I would have found some kind of pattern to help me get each of the twelve sections even.

Next I used a paring knife and started making scallops from each of the twelve sections. I didn't get them perfect, and given a chance to do this again, (assuming the sections were all the same size), I'd find a round cookie cutter or edge of glass to leave a light imprint so I could trace it better. The details I piped on later hid most of the ragged edges, though, so it was okay.
Next I used my #8 round tip and poked holes in the fondant to make it look like eyelet lace. You can see the full directions on how to do this here. I put the holes in first because I needed something firm behind the fondant, but I waited until I had the white overlay on the cake before I started piping on the detailing. Oh, I forgot to get pictures of me making the flowers, but I followed the tutorial you'll find here. They were super easy!
Here I'm piping on the details according to the directions on the website above. I used a #2 tip, which is a very small circle. I think next time I'd use the #1 and thin my icing just a bit more to make the lines just a little thinner. I'd also make my scallops a little wider to allow for more space to do the detailing.


And here was the finished product! From beginning to end it took less than three hours and turned out completely cute! My mom said it was too cute to eat--but we sure did enjoy it!