I beat this cake lol! (For explanation see my post down in Recipe Tips about how my first top slid right off the cake. )

Lessons Learned:
1) 10 in. round takes an entire box of cake mix each.
2) Using a heating core works! I used a flower nail the big one. Just leaves a hole in the bottom of the cake.
3) Dark purple is much easier color to obtain than dark red or black. I had a jar of Country Kitchen purple that I used and it is dark.
4) Not every square inch of a cake needs to be decorated. This is an easy newbie trap to fall into (look at my first cake lol! ) Think I have made progress.
5) The press set is cool for those of us that cant draw a decent line lol! Not a bad expenditure for $6.
6) It is much much easier when you have a design in mind ahead of time. I did this time. Sort of a variation on something I saw in one of the Wilton books.
6) 10 in. round is as large as my cooling racks accommodate. Need to buy new racks if I ever do a bigger cake.

Getting a little more refined.

Icing is Wilton's class buttercream in ivory. Shells are white. Vines are leaf green. And flowers are purple. You cant really tell with my cheap camera but between the shells I alternated green dots and purple flowers-cool effect and "pulls" the colors together from the vines and flowers. And the things in the middle are a big clump of flowers on the medallion press made out of white with the same tip I used to do the shells and not a black blob as my camera makes them appear!

This is a present for my co-workers tomorrow.

Next newbie cake will be to do real flowers with petals like roses. Gulp!

I like what I can see of your design. Your tips are great for others who are just beginning, too. Keep up the good work!!

Tanya

I also think it looks great, from what I can tell you did a good job on getting your icing smooth and the design is VERY pretty, thanks for the tips. I have been decorating for a while now and try to get every inch of the cake covered so I'll try the don't have to cover the whole thing next time I do one. I have learned on the corners on top that the border will cover it so I'm getting the general idea. Keep up the good work

Your cake looks great! And you have a handle on what it takes to progress. Good luck.

Very nice cake! Keep Decorating!

The cake looks great. And thanks for the tips, they are great for everyone!

I like it, I like the nice even pattern and it looks very neatly done, good for you.
Here is another tip for a newbie, only because I noted you mentioned leaf green. Experiment with the greens. Many people fall into the trap of always using leaf green for leaves and vines and such. There are many more natural colours of greens available, moss green, juniper green to name a few. One thing I have found that folks tend to stick to the leaf green and kelly green and never try out the other more natural shades of green available in Wilton and other makes.
I enjoy your newbie adventures, they are really helpful to a lot of people!
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Thanks all!

Squirrellycakes, I do have the other greens. I find the leaf green to be well...bright green lol! Too bright for what I think of in a real leaf. But I had some leftover icing to use up that was already leaf green.

My next cake will use the Juniper or Moss Green, I do have those colorings. I agree they are a far more "natural" leaf color. My next cake where I practice roses (again gulp ) I plan to do pastel colors-I need to work on getting pastels. So the other greens will be perfect.

The color combination I really like is in I got Wilton's garden or whatever box of colors with the Juniper, Aster Mauve, Buttercup and Delphinium (sp?) blue.

Newbie Advice: Buy a variety of different colorings. And a little goes a long way (other than with red and black). Try to stay in the same tone/intensity family. Ie if using bright primary colors, a muted color like light mauve may look out of place.

I also want to come up with a design for a white on white. I think those are so elegant!

The people at work were funny. (I work in a bank up in the offices.) We have a standard "food place" (aka a counter that we actually keep clean lol) for when people bring in treats and stuff. So I just put the cake out there with a sign "Thanks for your help and enjoy". (Since I am sort of mid-level management I think it is nice to recognize people.) I had 3 people ask me where I bought the cake. It was gone in 5 minutes flat-that's a record even for this chow crowd. Imagine what they will say when I actually get good at this.

My specialty has always been miniature pastries, truffles and cookies, some candies and occasional mini cakes. So every Christmas at work I would do HUGE spreads of pastries. These people can inhale nearly 3 FULL SHEET (yes, full sheet size) boxes full of double layered pastries in a single day. (And how many people are in my department you ask? About 30-40.) Days worth of work they can devour much more quickly than it takes to make (things like ladylocks/cream horns, tassies, snaps filled with flavored whipped cream, cream puffs, eclairs, etc.) I told them that for this Christmas I was doing a pared down version of the Wilton Truffle Tower that another poster here was so nice to send me the scan of and their jaw dropped. I love truffles.

Actually that Truffle Tower cake doesnt require extensive decorating skills. It is basically plain iced cakes that Wilton used their sculptor thing on the sides (need to figure out another way to do that since the sculptor got bad reviews here). Place a shelf made of chocolate on top. Then sit truffles on top of the chocolate. I will do the top 3 layers stacked (the truffle chocolate bowl that sits on top), a 6 and I think a 10 in. Then 2 of the "satellite" cakes which are 8 in. But I will have the truffles sprinkled with red, green and gold (either jimmies or luster dust or cake sparkles) for holiday colors. And maybe some marzipan (or artificial lol!) holly leaves as a filler for the display. That will be a lot of cake, but at the holidays, people actually roam departments looking for goodies lol! So it will be more than just my department eating them.

Lovely cake...moving right along to cake number five

You go girl!!!

Ivanabacowboy,
Funny you should mention the Garden Tones, these are my absolute favourites too. You can use just a bit and get some lovely pastels from them or use a lot and get some pretty deep shades. I think I use these colours more than any others.
Haha, I mentioned the greens because so many folks figure you have to always use the leaf green for leaves and vines. Actually what is really nice is to use several shades of green when you are making different flowers because the leaves are all different hues and when you mix you get a lot more depth to the arrangements. Then if you get into using the petal, lustre (luster) and pearl dusts, you can add even more subtle shadings.
I am not a big primary colours fan, but with children these are the colours they usually like, so I find I use them for children's cakes. The Pastel Colour set is nice, but you can get pretty good pastels using only a tiny bit of regular colour.
There are many brands of colours in many different forms, powders, gels, concentrated pastes etc. I know most folks here prefer Americolors, but I cannot get them in Canada. However I do like Wilton's mainly because there are so many colour options. I know a lot of people don't like them for the reds and blacks, but they are excellent for all of the other colour ranges. Haha and then there is mixing up different colours to get hues, that is fun too.
Well I bet you are really popular at your workplace! That truffle cake is sure to be a hit.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Great job, and I see the progress form your first cake to now.