This is the cake I did for a neighbor's 3rd bday a couple weeks ago. (no digital camera 
)
It's the first FBCT I've ever done, and I can at least say it's not evil. BUT I did learn that it's not as easy as it looks. Or else I just missed something in the directions. Anyway. Are there any good suggestions about how I could improve on this?
I did embellish it some once I got it on the cake. I used a star tip to make the hair 3D and added gold lustre dust to the crown and cake sparkles to the dress. The sparkly bits don't show up well in the pic, unfortunately.
So, ideas?
Thanks!
Bekah
I think we are our own worst critics and you did a great job. The hair was a great touch. Really gives it dimention.
What were you dissapointed with in this cake? Did you have a picture in your mind of how it would look? I tend to do my background in the FBCT so there's no need to make a borrder around it. Or I'll build up around it so it looks like the character is popping out of the background. But I think what you did looks great.
Well, SheilaF,
I didn't have any background planned other than the white buttercream. And to me, it looks "spackled" where I tried to hide the fact that the edges of the FBCT didn't hit the cake's frosted surface exactly flush (I had to "fill in" with buttercream so it wouldn't look like it was floating on top of the surface)
I had thought it would not be sitting so much on top as it would look integrated into the cake's surface icing, if that makes sense.
Also, I don't know if you can tell, but I couldn't quite get all the bubbles out of the surface, which bothered me most in her face.
That's all I can remember that was bugging me at the time. If you have suggestions about these issues, it would be great!
TIA,
Bekah
I use a fondant smoother for a lot of things. One of those it to make sure my FBCT's are flat on the back before I freeze them. YOu just have to be careful not to press to firmly and smear the outlines.
Bubbles and lines in the frosting: I take a small brush and blend them then pat the pattern back down smooth. After it crusts over, I take a sheet of wax paper (some ppl prefer viva paper towels for this) and smooth it down flat. Also use the fondant smoother for that so I don't leave finger impressions on the image. There are several FBCT photos in my photos for how they come out. I hope that helps.
P.S. most people don't notice the imperfections like we do. I can still find all my "mistakes" on all my cakes too 
I think it looks great, i definately dont see anything wrong. I like that you did not do the black outline. I really like the entire cake. good job. We are our worst critic and honestly no one else notices the imperfections like we do.
I think it looks fine! I sometimes add finishing touches on my FBCT too. For me, I sometimes make the image the entire top of the cake, but I really only do that on smaller cakes. When I first started doing these, I felt the same way as you did--nothing seemed to lay right and it always looked too thick to me and I didn't want to put borders around it. Over time, I started doing my FBCT's like this:
--I use clear celophane to put my image on. Some people use the clear vinyl or wax paper. I found that celophane works great!
--Outline first in a medium to stiff consistency with a tip #2 (but that could be adjusted depending on the image design).
--put it in the freezer to chill. While waiting, I get my bags ready for fill.
--pull the image out of the freezer and do small detailed areas first (what the outline is still frozen hard. If there are a lot of small detailed areas, I may shove it back in the freezer a number of times.
--when I fill the larger areas, I use as large of a tip that I can for that area.
--Now, before I shove that in the freezer again, I take the taped image off the bottom of my plexiglass. I lift it over my head (don't really like flipping it over, cause I have had one fall off despite the fact that it was taped down... 
) and then I take a tooth pick and swirl it around in each area to get rid of air bubbles, blend any lines left from the fill-in process and to make sure all of the icing made it to the edge of the outline. Sometimes it takes a lot of cleaning of the toothpick and using a new one for lighter colors vs. darker colors. After each area has been fixed, I make sure I smooth down any peaks left from fixing.
--Now at this point the image is filled with all colors, nice and fixed of a lot of the air bubbles and I don't have and streaky lines. I put it in the freezer again. While that is in the freezer, I prepare a bag of icing that I want to use as the base color (usually the same color as the cake, but not always) and put on a tip 10.
--take the image out of the freezer and then use that bag of icing that I just prepared, I outline the image again, I don't go over the edge of the original outline I did with the tip 2. I fill in the rest and then take my spatula and smooth it down and make sure it is level.
--The put in the freezer until I am ready to put it on the cake.
They key for me was that I didn't want a 1/4" thick or more FBCT image on my cake--I wanted it as thin as possible and I can get them to about 1/8" or less now. It does make them more fragile, so I take it right out of the freezer and stick it on the cake--no taking my time! 
Now I don't have this image so high and I don't have to add a border to hide any gaps. In my photo area, there is a 50th b-day disco pic and the body is a FBCT. You can't even tell that the background color that I put on was black. I hope that helps.
Now I will have to try SheliaF's method of using a brush and see if that works better than my toothpick thing...
ok, in response to some questions on the gallery regarding this cake, here is how I did the sides.
I made two templates - one for the purple striped sides, and one for the pink diamond sides.
The purple was easy. I needed light on dark purple stripes, so the template had slits where I wanted dark stripes. I covered the side of the cake with it, sprayed the ColorMist lightly, then removed the template. Result: light purple stripes on white stripes. I let that dry for a bit, then masked off top and neighboring sides of the cake and sprayed CM lightly again. Voila, the light stripes are now dark and the white is now light purple.
Same trick with the light on dark pink diamonds, with one twist. You can't cut out a complete diamond template, because you'll end up with just a big hole. So I cut out alternating vertical rows of diamonds almost to the width of the cake's side. used the template once, then shifted it down exactly one diamond-width to make the "missing" columns of diamonds, THEN went on to lightly spray the whole side with pink CM to darken the diamonds and make the background light pink.
Whew! Looks so complicated, but it's mostly just simple geometry.
It was pretty fun to work out, too. Making the templates would have been a lot easier if I'd used my computer to draw them first, though. Silly me, I drew them out with a pencil and quilting ruler before cuting. BIG D'OH!
So, just for fun, I'm going to do a Doug and give you a drawing of what I would have done if I'd had sense to print this out on my computer!
AAARRGGGHHH, ok, Doug, if you're out there, you do it! I tried to sketch this in a Word document, save it as a jpg file, then attach it. The file name attached fine, but it looks like nothing else did! If you can picture what I've described above, could you put up one of your oh-so-very-cool sketches to show others what I mean? Or tell me what the heck to do to make my computer drawing visible?
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