I attempted to make the beach cake that was posted under the piping gel article. My 7 year old wanted Polly Pocket sitting on the beach. Looked easy enough.
I decided to be cheap and make the piping gel from scratch. I got the recipe from sugarcraft.com and it sounded good and easy to make. My frosting is an all butter recipe, which is really yummy, but doesn't smooth perfectly. It's good enough for my family's birthday cakes.
I baked 2 nine in. rounds with the added egg and pudding in the mix, like I learned here. I bought the wilton cake leveller for under $3 and I'm glad I got it (wasn't able to level a cake before, I'm just not very coordinated). My frosting colors looked good, crumb coat looked good, frosting was relatively smooth and borders looked pretty good for a beginner. Next came the piping gel ocean and cookie crumb sand. I was really happy when I put the cake into the fridge. I thought the piping gel would firm up in the fridge, because it was pretty runny while I was working with it. The next morning I opened the cake carrier and showed my daughter and we were sooo disappointed. There was blue goop running down the sides of the darn cake. I promised her I would be able to fix it while she was at school. The darn piping gel ran right off the top of the cake and even made the borders fall off. I had to remove all the borders and scrape off the piping gel. The cookie crumbs were pretty messy too. The sides had been smooth and white originally, but I had to make them blue (and NOT smooth) to hide the piping gel color which bled. I added extra cookie crumb to cover up the messed up "sand", but accidentally got cookie crumbs on the side of the cake. 
In the end, it looked okay and tasted great. The Polly Pocket dolls on top helped to distract from all of the mistakes, but more piping gel ran off the cake before the party that afternoon. I kept the house cold all day thinking it would help. I won't ever make piping gel again!!! I hope to save other bakers from my mistake with that terrible recipe.
Kelly
Oh my, sorry you had such a hard time with your piping gel. Your salvaged cake looks great though. I am sure your daughter was thrilled with it.. You did a great job. 
Liz
Sorry for all of the trouble you had!! I think I would have cried!! You cake turned out great though!!
You could have kept it and said they were waterfalls. LOL Nice save! Looks great!
You made a terrific save from this. I know that it can be so disappointing to have something for a loved one not work out. But I think that you pulled off a good show for your daughter!
Tanya
You would never know! Your finished cake looks great!
I agree with all above comments - your cake is adorable - I have 2 little girls who would have loved it! 
I have come to find that making the best out of the worst situation, especially while cake decorating, just gives people more confidence in gtheir abilities. So you know that recipe for piping gel doesn't work. Evidently, there wasn't enough gelatin in that recipe. Keep playing with the recipe to find the consistency you like, and most importantly, keep your imagination going as you did with this cake.
Debbi
I had the EXACT same thing happen to me with the homemade recipe. I'm 50 miles from the closest Michaels and was thrilled to find a recipe. My ocean also ran all over the cake in the fridge overnight. What a mess! Luckily it was for family and we just ate it that way, LOL! You made a great save!!!!
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