HELP!!!
I've taken it upon myself to make my nephew's 1st birthday cake & I'm looking for some helpful pointers. The cake is a 3D pirate ship, covered in buttercream at the moment. My next step is to cover it with fondant. What's the best approach?
The base of the cake is a narrow oval, coming to a point at the front and has a straight edge in the back. The rear of the ship has two decks above the ship base and the front of the ship has one deck. I've covered several round & square cakes before, but never a cake with so many levels & edges.
Is it easier to piece the fondant for each layer or will I be able to cover the entire cake with one large piece of fondant? I like very crisp edges & I'm concerned about tearing the fondant with one large piece & I'd have to create edging to cover the seams if I pieced it...aaaaggghhh!
What would look more polished? HELP!!!

OOOH. I love pirate ship cakes. I cover them with "boards" of fondant. Roll out a big ol' piece of brown fondant, run a rolling cutter over it LIGHTLY to make it look like wood. Then, use a ruler to cut it into strips. Use the end of a kabob stick to make a small round impression in the end of each "board" to look like nails. Then you just piece them on the ship one at a time. It sounds time consuming, but I find it goes really quick. Almost as quick as putting the fondant on all at once. Seriously...I LOVE this technique. I have a ship in my photos if you want to see what I mean. And it makes for really good corner lines and edges because you can just cut the "boards" to whatever length you need them!

I did a pirate ship cake and covered mine similar to Avalyn. I covered the deck with one piece of light brown fondant. For the sides, I cut a ton of darker fondant strips all the same width, but different lengths. Then I just placed them on the cake one piece at at time until the sides were covered. I used a small round tip at the four corners of each strip for the "nails". My pirate ship cake is in my photos as well. It really wasn't that time consuming. Have fun!!!

Thanks for the help!!! It sounds pretty simple the way you two have explained it. I'll have to post a picture once it's done.

Thanks again!!!

Rebecca

one word: panels.

I'll try to post a pic but I did my very first cake (a Noah's Ark, but still) with panels and did fondant rope up the seams and rolled them at the top...looked great! esp. for a first cake!!

I took everyone's advice & made individual wood planks. I was real happy with the way it turned out! My pic sizes are too large to add here, so I'll try to in my profile. Thanks for the advice!

Rebecca

Here is a picture of the pirate ship. I just figured out how to compress the picture file. I posted more images of the cake in my profile. Again, thanks for the pointers.

Rebecca