I'm in the middle of decorating my Cake dummies and I'm not sure if I should go all the way or only half?

Do you decorate all 360 degrees or only half of your dummies?

Why? I'm torn because I know I'm just going to tear it off eventually and make a new one so just wondering if there is something I'm missing as to why I should do the whole thing?

Thanks!

I normally do all my dummies 360 so I can take photos from different angles.  I keep them around for awhile as displays.  It will be interesting to see other opinions :)

I do the whole thing, too. I feel that, except for the fact that it's Styrofoam, a dummy should be just like a real cake. So, decorated all the way around; no inedible décor; nothing stuck into it; no glue guns; you get the picture.

I do mine all the way around as well, for the same reason JWinslow said, I can take pictures at any angle.

Darn it..lol...So Just a flat front shot would be bad and a close up between two tiers? I was thinking repeating pattern no matter what angle its the same three tiers all the way round...its late and my eyelids are heavy so I'm probably not thinking to clear

APsssshaw. Yep, sometimes I'll do just enough to fill the frame, and I'll take closeups at an angle that doesn't show the undecorated part. I don't smooth down the back fondant either, I just smooth it around far enough to where you don't see it, and tear it off the back.

There's my girl! As long as I know someones done it and I'm not missing something since its my first dummy. I'm hitting the hay my brain is dead I don't know how some of you work till midnight..its only 10:30pm and I need tape to hold my eyelids open.

I am doing mine all the way around because I can always use more practice.

If you do dummies cause you need the practice, then yeah, might as well do do it right. But they're never gonna misbehave, so I always say do as many real cakes as dummies to make sure you're keeping up with the way real cake behaves too.

I know!! That's what I was thinking when I was doing the dummies...when I had something to fix on the side I would catch myself picking it up and tilting it. I just got tired of eating all of that darned cake!

I do the entire dummy. I like the look of a finished cake.

Thanks for all the replies. I have a small dummy cake and I think that one will be one sided and then I'll do my larger one all the way around. Thing is I'm also trying to start my portfolio so if I only do half then I can ripe it off start again and not waste so much material. I'd like to start the first few cakes as halfs and at the end of the portfolio make them whole to save. In all this I think I need more dummies! lol.

How many dummy cakes do you have pre-made at a time?

Wow 12!!!! lol...Ok well if you didn't have a show and you just had them made up so clients could see how many?

AWhen I use dummy cakes I cover the entire thing. Usually I make dummies both for pictures and display purposes so that when I do have a show coming up, I already have display-worthy cakes-- rather than having to complete a whole lot of them for a show.

As my skills improve I rip up those that are no longer the style of cakes I want to create to make designs more in line with my present skill set.

Do you wrap your dummy in plastic wrap?  I tried one once, and ended up throwing it away after trying to get the fondant off.  I think I had only rubbed it with shortening.

did you try soaking your dummy in hot water to get the fondant off?

I did, and rubbed under running water.  At which point I was loosing Styrofoam!  I had just started out, and my Wilton teacher had an extra dummy that I bought to play with.  As a hobby baker, I don't have much call for dummies, but just wondered!

No no no! No hot water, no soaking. Just let them dry up, put them in a plastic bag, and whack it all over from the outside of the bag with a rolling pin or a mallet. The fondant will crack right off leaving your styrofoam in perfect condition, IF you used shortening to adhere it in the first place. Water generally makes it stick too hard and then all you can do is soak it, but it weakens the dummy. Use shortening, and either peel it back off before it hardens, or what I just described.

glad I used shortening then...

AI wrap in plastic then smear with shortening. You can just pull the whole thing off. In fact, I've been able to pull fondant off a dummy completely intact after it had hardened doing it that way.

I just put the fondant directly on the dummy. Unless it's shaped like a pillow or something.

LOL..too funny!

I put a mix of water/ piping gel on mine and put the fondant on that way. I read in one of the threads you can stick them in the freezer and the whole thing pops right off. I haven't tried that yet but I'll let you know if I decide to destroy one.

This reminds me of a video I just watched earlier on Wicked Goodies site where she punched and karate kicked a cake...lol. I know I have worked on cakes where I have wanted to do that too...a Hammer would be fun too