My First Competition Cake!

Hello Steemit world! I recently entered a cake in my local summer fair Hobby Show. I was really excited about it, but unfortunately, mine was the only entry in the cake decorating category. No competition makes my first prize ribbon not so special. Oh well, maybe next summer there will be more entrants. This was the first year in quite some time that the Hobby Show has been organized; it made a successful come-back in many ways. The handcrafted items, art, quilts and gardening categories all had dozens of entries. I'm grateful one of the local business owners decided to sponsor and organize it this year.
I made a tree stump cake for my entry.

I wanted something a little different from what I had viewed on line since tree stump cakes became popular, so I added a "birch bark" bird house. It was covered in marshmallow fondant and with the end of a toothpick dipped in brown gel food coloring, I added the lines and irregular marks to resemble birch bark. The roof of the bird house was marshmallow fondant also; I made the rows of shingles with the wide edge of a 1M icing tip. I dusted some black petal dust along the edge of each row and also added some to the white bark, after the brown gel had dried. I piped a shell border along the edge of the roof and added fondant "lace" to finish. I used icing tips to make the lace pattern.

The bottom tier was covered in chocolate buttercream and after crumb coating, I used a small offset spatula to add globs of icing and kind of squished it in a vertical motion, not horizontally, like you would normally frost a cake. It was a super easy technique to get the rough bark look I wanted. You Tube tutorials for stump cakes inspired me to decorate with buttercream pine cones and mushrooms in different shapes and sizes. The red berries are candy sprinkles. I love piping lily of the valley and wanted to try a fern leaf, so I added those elements too. I like the woodland look it gave to the finished cake.