I have a cake due next week for my husbands work and they are wanting a present cake with a bow that looks like curling ribbon. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well you can do it 2 ways..I have the old strip cutter from FMM or PME anyway..It was a plastic cutter with metal blades and it cut fondant strips about 1/4 inch wide.You can cut strips and hang them from a dowels stick to dry to make loops.You can also wrap the thin strips around dowel rods to make curly ques...I use thie technique in many of my kids cake...HTH

sounds easy enough...thank you...after I curl it, how do I make the actual bow?

You just start poking the loops in and around to resemble a bow..It is quite easy actually..You could also make a larger package bow but it takes more time and the bow ends up being heavier as the royal icing or candy melts makes it heavy when you glue it all together.Takes longer to dry too...

It needs to be a fairly large bow as the cake will be a 18x18 square. I've never made a bow before so I'm kinda nervous. Should I let the fondant completly dry then try to make the bow or should I do it while its still soft? I'm guessing I should mix the fondant with gum paste right? What is the candy melts for and royal icing for?

Yes..The bow needs to dry really well..Like a week or so..The royal icing is to glue the loops together or you can use candy melts.I would make a large package bow then since the cake is quite large...The loops need to be wider than the skinny loops I spoke about in previous post.There is a tutorial on CC to make the package bow...It is fairly easy as well you just have to make sure the loops are exactly the same size..3 different sizes..Then when you fit them into each other it looks natural and not fake.Check out the tutorial...

Hi, here is a little help also.
you would make the curling ribbons by cutting the fondant/gumpaste thinner strips and loop around a dowel rod until it sets up and then use water to glue on cake.


http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/fondant-bow.html

here is another..

http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/fondant-loop-bow.html

if you want it to look like a package. then add then ribbon across the length and width of the cake and then put your bow on and then the curling effect ribbons. hth

I really like the loop bow. I will show it to them and see what they say...thank you