Hello everyone, I stumbled across this amazing site and am wondering...for someone who has only ever baked a cake and used ready made icing and boxed cake mix...is it difficult to learn how to decorate a great cake? I am thinking about taking a class at Michaels in Feb. because that's when they're booked up until but I am working a part time job and was wondering what are the main supplies I will need and which would you recommend? I'm creative and artistic but have never attempted to actually decorate a cake before. Help!!! This is important to me as I have a three year old and  a five year old daughter who keep requesting special cakes for their birthday's and it would be neat to make them at home.

AWelcome! I am a newbie decorator and had never done any type of decorating until I took the Wilton courses at a JoAnn's in April of this year. Caution: this is a highly addictive hobby!!! You will learn the basics with Wilton but there is a wealth of information on here as well as you tube that will take you to the next level with decorating. I don't find many of the Wilton tools to be quality items and you are required to purchase the kits as part of the course material. It is very simple to figure out which ones work for you and which ones don't but unfortunately that is a lot of wasted money. Pursue your passion and have fun! You can take a look at my gallery and see how far I have come in 7 months from knowing NOTHING!

Basic decorating is something anyone with a desire can learn.  To give you a start before the Wilton class, check out the you tube videos by seriouscakes and tonedna.  Both have a bunch of really good quality videos that cover a huge range of decorating.  Go easy buying cake supplies, it is easy to get enticed by all the goodies.  Just pick up things as you need them so you don't end up with a lot of things not needed. 
 

Welcome OP! All good advice you're getting here. I caught the decorating bug in 2009 when I offered to (try my best to) make a Halloween-themed wedding cake for my ex-DIL (weird I know but we're still very close). BOY did I ever bite off more than I could chew! Although I could always make a delicious cake, my first attempt at stacking & decorating was way too bad to even submit to Cake Wrecks (Dear DIL loved it anyway)

You can learn A LOT from CC, YouTube & the Wilton Tiered Cake magazine. I bought (and discarded) tons of Wilton stuff before I learned from the pros on this site what quality equipment really is!

Valuable lessons learned:

Cake toys are more addicting than crack

You don't need every gadget there is to turn out a beautiful cake (got tons of great tips on this site for using common household items, hardware store gadgets, etc)

DO invest in good baking pans

Practice, practice, practice

Good luck and happy caking!