2014 North Carolina State Fair Competition Cake

I always struggle SO much with deciding on a design to attempt for my State Fair cake - I like to use my competition cake as a way of pushing myself and trying new things and I just always have so many techniques or things on my "cake decorating bucket list" that it's just so hard to choose! Thankfully this idea wasn't too hard to settle on! I've slowly been working my way through learning various sugar flowers and thought it would be fun to really create a lot of them to go on a cake - certainly more than I've ever attempted to make & place before! I also wanted to attempt some wood grain and can't even begin to say how excited I am with the outcome there - most folks don't realize the bottom tier is fondant as well until I tell them, so taking that as a good sign. It's hard to see in my photos, but I also made one of the white tiers slightly different - when kneading my fondant, I mixed in some pumpkin pie spice to give it little "flecks" that almost resemble linen! My family will be visiting the Fair on Monday, so we'll see if my attempts garnered a ribbon then :)