OK, my second official real cake. White cake. Filling is raspberry blended in with a bit of the buttercream. YUM! I got to lick the bowl from the filling lol! That is GOOD!
Nearly a cake disaster when I misjudged moving one of the layers onto cooling rack-and it missed the rack and cracked clean in half. It was repairable tho. Used it on the bottom and put a crumb coat to glue it together lol! Then I did my dam and filling. Proud to report the dam worked perfectly therefore my cake is not pink on the outside. 
Self-Assessment: Most assuredly a bit more refined than my first attempt lol! The flowers are just drop flowers made with Royal Icing. Not confident enough yet to conquer the rose-maybe soon. Shells came out ok-will keep practicing. Getting the hang of pressure and using the pastry bag, at least my flowers/leaves/shells are all relatively the same size this time and better spaced. My leaves in the middle WERE nice and I was proud-however, my dear son promptly came up and stuck his fingers in them and started picking out my flowers, crushing some of the leaves! So some of them look kind of smushy and raggy-but they didnt. 
I also need to tone down my use of coloring-a bit too bright for me. Need to remember you can always add more if it is too light...
The top border I got the idea from a Wilton book. There are big leaves (one of the really large leaf tips) under the flowers around the top edge-and the leaves fold over onto the sides kind of ruffly. Looks cool. The sides are a very thin green vine with some tinier drop flowers in the white/yellow hanging from them. I have a plain yellow shell around the bottom.
I got an even circle for the flowers in the middle using....an upside down dessert bowl lol! Just to make an imprint I could follow. Dont need a lot of expensive tools.
Summary: Still a looooonnnggg way to go. But definitely an improvement. That's why this was a practice. And hopefully next one will be more improvement. And eventually I will be as good as many of you!
Then of course figured out the batteries on my camera were dead. 
So I was limited by the length of my USB cord lol! So excuse the poor background and lighting.
Wow, great job! Your icing is nice and smooth! Your flowers are perfect and you lined them up perfectly too, good for you! The leaves add a wonderful touch, you did a marvelous job kiddo, pat yourself on the back!!!
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes
Thank you! I think I got the hang of smoothing icing. Last time I used just waxed paper and my hand. This time I used waxed paper and a fondant smoother lol! Icing is smooth as a baby's bottom. (Tho if you look close enough you can see the one imperfection in my icing at about the 2 o'clock position-my son's fingerprint from when I caught him smashing my leaves and stealing my flowers! 
)
You did a great job! 
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