ive been searching for a few days and still havent found what im looking for...

i want to put garland swags around a cake made of frosting.. i dont have time to buy a marker for this.. anyone have ideas how i can do this? videos would be helpful thanks in advance

the bakery i used to work in we always used disposable cups, we cut them in half and then adjusted the semi circle as we needed to going around the cake. Some were a little off, but you could adjust that with icing, but cake civilians don't notice a 1/4 inch here or there.

Depending on the diameter of your cake, decide if you want six or eight (or more) garland swags. You can mark the edge of your cake with a toothpick at the 12:00 and 6:00 clock position (back and front), then divide into more sections as needed... more marks at 2:00, 4:00, 8:00, and 10:00 for six swags, or mark 3:00, 9:00 (right and left), and once more in between all for eight swags. If you mark the edge this way by eyeballing it into divisions, you'll know where to start and stop when piping. Hope this makes sense.

Depending on the size of you cake, couldn't you cut put pieces of plastic to make an "arch"...maybe out of a plastic milk carton. Like this. Say you have a 8" round cake. First divide you cake into "invisible" quarters...marking each corner of the quarter with a small dot of icing...then divide the quarters in half by placing a dot of icing in the center of each quarter...measure between the dots...cut out the plastic to the size you want and use it as a guide to position your "garlands" around the cake evenly. I hope that makes sense. It is hard to describe what I'm trying say. Maybe this will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

I am not sure if your buttercream will be crusted and if you can do this, but I once saw someone stick long pins/toothpicks around the cake to mark the spots for the beginning and ending of a garland. Then she took a very delicate chain (like a necklace) and hung it between the two pins, so that it fell naturally into a swag shape. Then she piped following that swag, then removed the chain.

Or maybe you can just use the chain to draw the swag and then remove, then pipe.