making a soccer cake for my twin niece's bday next weekend. I'm sure there are cutters/ good ideas out there to get a good looking soccer ball. Suggestions or sites to buy cutters from? THANKS!

Are you doing a half or whole? I did a half (pic in gallery) and used the Wilton soccer ball pan. It has indentions where the hexagons go, so I actually just traced those by holding a piece of paper against it and then just used that as a template. The shapes are not all the same, FYI... HTH....

I made a 3D soccer cake for my daughters birthday using the Wilton Sports Ball Pan. I used the pattern from the instructions and cut fondant pieces out by hand and put them on like a puzzle. Sadly the ball did not go together well. It was a disaster on the back side of the cake. If I ever have to do another I think I would make the pattern slightly bigger.

If they do make cookie cutters, I would love to know as cutting them out can be tedious, especially when I made soccer cupcakes. I once searched online how to make your own cookie cutters - unfortunately I couldn't sucker my hubby into making them for me.

For a 3d, maybe this would help to do the pattern cutouts, it's a paper template (directions say: Template for hyperbolic soccer ball this is a template by Keith Henderson to print out for making paper hyperbolic soccer ball. Use three sheets and overlap the hexagons that have the three dots. Also, don't cut the dotted segments, to save time, but cut only solid lines)
http://www.math.cornell.edu/~henderson/ExpGeom/soccer.jpg
just a thought.

Hi - I also used the Wilton ball shaped cake pan - it went very well for my son's birthday cake this summer. I started at the top center of the cake and worked my way down from there. It seemed to work pretty well. I traced the wilton pattern from the directions with waxed paper a - making several of each and then cut them out. I then poked a hole in the center of each piece. This enable me to place them on the cake together without having to hold them while I traced them. I then took a paring knife and drew shallow lines in the crumb coat. I was then able to and pipe the borders and then fill them in with the icing. If you wanted, you could do the same with the fondant pieces and use the patterns to cut out your shapes. Good luck!