i am doing level one cake decorating at college and i am required to do a royal iced cake which incorporates the following: royal iced flowers, scrolls, line work and shells.....personally i hate this theme, but our tutor is not open to adaptations, all the cakes i have seen seem a little...twee!!! has anyone got any ideas of a nice, modern cake design that will fulfill the criteria? it can only be a single layer, no sparkle or alternative covering (fondant, buttercream etc.) HELP PLEASE, she has only given us 3 weeks to do 2 cakes! 
I know I'm going to get some flack about this, but I love old-school work, and I think that everyone should learn it and use it from time to time.
I'm in the US, so please tell me what they refer to as line work over there. I've already got a design started in my head, but I need to know what that term means in order to incorporate it.
Thanks -
Theresa 
I know I'm going to get some flack about this, but I love old-school work, and I think that everyone should learn it and use it from time to time.
Amen! I dont' think you can really call yourself a decorator unless you have mastered this part of it also.
haribo, I think what your instructor is trying to show you is ALL types of decorating skills ... your tutor is trying to NOT limit you to the "throw some material in a mold and call it decorating" type of thinking. A true artist can do many, many types of creating.
Can you imagine if Emeril could only cook chicken because beef was considered "old school"?
Don't lose the art ... don't be misled into thinking that anything "old" is no good. Don't look down your nose at something you haven't yet mastered or learned .... until you recognize the skill and talent involved in doing those.
That may be the very lesson your tutor is trying to get across to you.
Re: your request for ideas, Here's one I did on a dummy .... lace, stringwork, BC borders, BC rosebuds and leaves ... and I added some choc sheets around the top tier to "modern" it up (got the idea from a magz from England). Otherwise, all of the designs came from a 1977 Wilton book. http://forum.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1264153
Thanks to you both for responding.......please don't get me wrong, i know my tutor is just trying to use different techniques and understand it is an important part of the art, it's just that this particular style is not really to my personal taste, i like aspects individually but find it a little too much detail to put on an 8inch single tier round dummy. The one you shown me indydebi is lovely as it is spread over the tiers.....i can only have 1 and have to have space for an inscription.
Theresa, if you look at the link indydebi kindly put on for me, the line work is the loops around the cake, it does not have to be of this style, but lines, trellis etc has to be on it.
Hey, i actually love old fashioned things....particularly furniture......this cake is just not my thing and i'm struggling. i also had to do one with stencils and runouts, i did a foxglove stencil and butterfly runout for mother's day.....that was quite old fashioned, but nice.
Thanks again
Ok, thanks. I was taught to call that drop strings, therefore, I learned something new today!
I do understand that this is not your style of work. I am thinking that you are more of a modern/contemporary person. So why not take these skills and re-arrange them somehow. Taking a traditional design and abstracting it in the right way can make it more modern.
Will you be piping with Royal Icing? Does the inscription have to be piped on top? If not, can you pipe something around the side? Can you use stiff consistency royal icing and a medium open star tip and use scrolls as a border? Can the shells be piped like a clock face on the top of the cake? And then the strings can be piped to connect those strings together, like a spider web.
I'll give this some more thought and get back to you.
Theresa
I don't know if you can get any ideas from this cake???
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