I have only seen this cake done in fondant. This means to me that the foundation of the cake should be fondant. But here goes my question : Can you make the cake that has the tight center gum paste rose or gardenia type flower where the petals expand out toward the top of the four tier cake and then also downward? They are individual petals that give the effect of this large flower with outward spiraling petals. I hope I explained this properly. 

Thank you

Ahttp://cakecentral.com/t/743475/rose-petal-cake Do you mean like this cake?

Yes, that's the cake. I did that cake as a dummy and the petals wouldn't stick. However since it was a dummy I just hot glued them! But what do you do with a real cake? Then I have a client who has this same cake with a wide wavy band at its base that looks like it is made of dragees. I think that cake is a dummy but can't be sure. What are your thoughts on this cake.

AThis is what you do with a real cake

m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=sI3riDoTnJ0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsI3riDoTnJ0

I personally think the cake is pretty in all white or maybe red rose but I've seen some done just like this in colors that I think are very ugly or they just make the flower to big.an all white cake with silver dragees would probably be really pretty. The one in the picture shown is really pretty that's all the bigger I would ever go with the size of the flower. This one here cakecentral.com/t/758638/flower-petal-cake in my opinion is to much flower and I don't like the color of the flower BUT that's just my taste.

This was really helpful.! Thank you so much. So this was a buttercream cake. I had only seen it in fondant and am happy to see that you can do it in buttercream. It appeared that you were actually anchoring the petal somewhat into the cake.

When I did it in fondant the my fondant petals wouldn't stick even with royal icing. What could have been in the gumpaste to make it not stick?

I've made this cake in both bc and fondant and both worked fine.  I will say it was easier with bc because you just stick the petals in.  When I did it with fondant I used royal icing to adhere it and it worked fine.  If you are having trouble getting things to stick you can use a can of 'freeze'.  This would work for royal icing or melted chocolate which is also a good adhesive.  Once you attach the petal you spray the chocolate or icing with the 'freeze' and it hardens right up.  I've used this when making large peonies and it works great.  The 'freeze' is a bit expensive (about $30 a can) but it lasts quite a while.
 

You guys have been so helpful!! So here's some more. The same client brought me this photo with the expanding flower that had a thick wavy band of what looked like bling but with tons of dragees. Have any of you seen this? I know dragees are not edible. Am I missing something . Is there anything out there that would be edible on this order? This is a client who really likes this cake from the internet. I'm not sure if this is maybe silver crystal sugar with maybe silver royal icing dots interspersed? But this on buttercream I think would be a mess. I'm not sure if I would even want to attempt that on fondant. This photo may have come from Pinterest it showed this tiered cake on top of a cupcake display. I originally thought this was a dummy. Any thoughts from anyone?

Thanks so much in advance. I'm sorry to have all these problems.

ADo you have a picture we can see of the cake you are talking about? What about glam ribbon from caljava its not editable but comes in one long strip that you cut to fit on the cake than it can be removed before they cut the cake. There is a video on there site about the ribbon and it comes it different colors if you want.

www.caljavaonline.com/index.html

AThis cake has a tiny bit of gliz on the bottom of each tier

m.pinterest.com/pin/192528952789972133/

AThis is more of what I'm thinking with a taller cake and alittle bigger flower

m.pinterest.com/pin/189925309257526121/

/Cmd+VI'm having problems pasting the photo. My browser has some kind of security that won't let me do it. Thanks for the Glam strip but that's not what this bling is. It must be the silver crystal sugar.Thanks so much for all your efforts to try to help me.