I am interested in doing a petal cake for a friend's birthday next weekend, in fall colors... variegated so they blend from yellow on top to brown on the bottom. I've never done a petal cake and I'm wondering if there's a reason why the "petals" go around the cake as opposed to be drawn up the cake?

Does that make any sense? Is there any reason why I couldn't do the brown dot row around the cake base and smoosh them upward then do the reddish-brown row and smoosh them upward, etc... instead of how the tutorials say to make a vertical line of dots (in my case, one dot of each color) and smoosh them to the side?? It just seems like it would make more sense in this color scheme to do them differently if it wouldn't make the icing fall off or something.

Any thoughts?

Thank you!

You can have the petals run however you want. I've seen it done in many different ways. It's so fun and versatile. Have fun with it! =)

I saw a cake where they did the bottom with the petals going up, and the top half with the petals going down, and a ribbon in the middle were they met. It looked really nice.

Thank you so much for the encouragement! I can't wait to give this a try and see how it goes!!