Decorating Basics: Dimentional Decorating

One thing we learned in the basic decorating class is how to transfer a pattern to a cake, then fill it in using dimensional decorating. You basically trace a picture with piping gel, then turn it on to the cake and rub the gel on the cake. What remains is an outline of your picture, that you can then fill in...which makes it so you don't have to free hand a puppy dog or something on your cake.

My first try was to put a flower on a cake.
Not all together bad, but if you look closely you can see some yellow oozing out of my flower. My piping gel was too runny, and I didn't fill it in well enough with icing. I should have traced it larger to cover it up, but I guess I was being conservative. My border is ok, but my dots need work.

Now comes my REAL masterpiece. I thought I'd give it another go and practice some more picture transfers. I was trying to come up with ideas for Emeline's birthday cake. What does she like? What do one year olds like? Well, she'd been really into this monkey toy latley, so I thought I'd try to put a monkey on the cake. The Paul Frank logo seemed simple enough, especiially when just tracing. Here's what I got. I call it Poo Frank. First problem: Brown icing. Brown icing never looks right. Esp when you don't use brown coloring. I read online you can make brown with red and green, so I tried that. It's kinda brown, but if I ever have to make brown again (which I will avoid like the plague), I'll use a brown food coloring. Second mistake...brown icing with a tip 12 (large round tip) will almost always create poo. That was not my goal here. Third mistake, the logo actually uses 3 colors, black brown, and red. I should have splurged and made all three, rather than trying to just use two. And mistake number four: Don't wing it on writing on a cake. LOL. I knew this would happen. We learned techniques for printing on a cake that week in class, and I know I'm terrible at it. But I thought, hey, here's an opportunity to practice. So I just went for it, knowing full well it would look bad. And, I was right. It did look bad. But at least I wasn't surprised. So I hope you got a good laugh out of Poo Frank.

And last, but not completely least, here is my final cake from the decorating basics class. I didn't think much of dimensional decorating, but I thought maybe I just needed more practice. While my classmates gave it up, and placed beautiful buttercream roses on their cakes, I attempted dimensional decorating yet again, trying out another birthday cake idea...a hot air balloon (these decorate Emeline's room). If I had actually made it look like the ones in her room, it would have been pretty cute, but alas, my tip 12 failed me again. It's not bad, I guess, but not what I had in mind.
I don't actually have that much critique for this cake. I think this is about as good as I'll get at dimensional decorating. As I've since learned, there are a lot more interesting things to put on a cake :)