Cake decorating, my latest craft fetish

So I must admit, I am kind of a fickle craft junkie.  I love to do crafts of all kinds, but after a while I get bored and move on to a new craft.  I have tried knitting, crocheting (not my favorite things to do), scrap booking, card making, sewing, toll painting, jewelry making, and a few I am sure I have forgotten about.  My latest "craft adventure" is cake decorating.  My niece Sydney and I started taking Wilton cake decorating classes about 2 months ago at the Robert's craft in South Jordan.  Sydney and I love the cake decorating shows on TLC like Cake Boss and the Ultimate Cake Off.  It amazes me how people can make these enormous and beautiful cakes.  So, Syd and I decided that we should give it a try.  We are finishing up the second Wilton course on Tuesday which has been all about making flowers with royal icing.  It was kind of difficult at first to get the techniques down for each flower (especially the rose,) but after last Tuesday, I think I have it down now.  I sat down at my kitchen table for a couple of hours on Wednesday and made about 80 flowers.  I love making pansies and daffodils and I think my roses are starting to look pretty good.  Daisies are incredibly easy to make as are primroses (the pink flowers in my pictures.)  It has been so much fun making cakes and decorating them.  I still need to practice some of my other techniques, but I am making progress.
Other flowers we learned to make included violets, apple blossoms, chrysanthemums, as well as violet leaves.  I don't have pictures of those yet but will be able to post those later.
I have found cake decorating pretty relaxing, especially making flowers.  I am amazed that I can actually make frosting look like something alive and growing like a flower.  I find myself studying real flowers so I can make my sugary little petals look more life like.

This is the first cake I made in my Wilton class.  We learned how to do drop stars, write on a cake, and do zigzags.  Not bad for a very first cake, but a far cry from where I want to be.

For my second cake, we learned how to do drop flowers, shell borders, and how to make creepy clowns.  I think this cake turned out pretty well.

I learned how to do roses, sweet peas, and leaves on my third cake.  It turned out good but I still needed some work on making roses.

I made this cake for a friend's baby shower.  You can see my technique is getting better, but I am definitely no Cake Boss.

I love the rosettes on this cake (the swirly things all over the cake).  They were easy to make and I think they look pretty cool.

I made this cake for a patient of mine.  She celebrated her birthday in the hospital so I thought I would cheer her up by practicing my cake decorating skills on a cake for her.  It was fun to do that for her.

My next cake will be my final project this next Tuesday.  We are learning how to do a basket weave and then will put all the flowers we made on top.  I am excited to post pics when I am done with the final project cake.  After that, we will be learning fondant and gum paste and will learn to make a wedding cake.

Learning cake decorating has been a blast and is something I would love to keep doing.  I remember my mom made some really cool cakes for my brother and sister and me when we were little.  It was always cool to have a home made cake that looked and tasted great.  I want to be able to do that for Ashton so he will have fond memories of his birthdays and how his mom took the time to make it extra special.