I'm being adventurous (or downright crazy). Never done a 3d cake before, only made my first batch of fondant (and cake with fondant) about a month ago, and I have this crazy idea in my head that NOW I can do a 3 D cake.... for my daughters 3rd Birthday next weekend...

So I am wanting to make a dinosaur, and feel fairly confident with the structure - we have all the materials, but have not assembled yet.I hope to do that tomorrow, but have concerns/questions...

I am going to have 3 Boards, the botom/base, a board where tail and body meet, and a 3rd to support the shoulders and head. I have 3 dowels coming from the middle board to the base for support (one for each leg, and one for the tail).

My concern is, covering all of the non-food surfaces and making them safe. I have read about covering with contact paper, but the cast aluminum hinges hat I have, how can I possibly cover those and the screws with contact paper? or any paper? the wood dowels, should I cover those with plastic wrap and then the rice crispies? or will the plastic wrap slide right off? I have wilton dowels for the arms - are those food safe or should I cover those too? the leg dowels are from the hardware store. I have PVC for the arms, and head and neck, jaws, etc. So I guess I just cover those with plastic and then the rice crispies.. but the flanges have me worried, on the neck/shoulder board, there will be flanges on the bottom and on the top, but at some point it will be exposed since I need to feed the board onto the dowels supporting it. HELP please! THANK YOU!

Im also interested. I made a cake with flanges (the ice cream cone) and just covered them in fondant since there was nothing edible around it.