How do you do those detailed scroll designs on the sides of wedding cakes? Kind of like the photo below... I've only done simple free handed scrolls before, but some of these scroll designs are pretty complicated & I have no idea where to start. Any help or links to tutorials would be greatly appreciated!

for me -- i would pipe the top of the open heart first then the right and left pieces that make the sides of the heart then the legs on it then just keep working through the puzzle filling it in -- i might mark the outer edges and top and bottom of the design -- that's how i would do it --

an idea for you is to copy it and place it under some parchment and just practice it over and over till you get a rhythm with it -- start in the middle with the top of the heart and add the diifferent pieces -- you still might want to trace it a bit onto your surface --

but if you pipe from your shoulder -- your arm will naturally make circles -- just learn to guide them into the patterns you want -- you'd want to stand over your work -- keep it under you so you just have to rotate your shoulder to make it happen -- you don't want to reach up -- you want your arm to hang down to practice -- stretch out the icing as you pipe -- move confidently even if at first it looks wonky -- just keep practicing -- pipe purposefully -- your first goal is rhythm not accuracy --

best to you

the dots balance the design -- the scroll work is beautiful and i'm not taking anything away from the decorator -- it's stunning but for the sake of talking to you about how to do it -- it is not at all a mirror image -- it's beautiful piping -- beautiful flowing hand hewn masterful piping -- it's what i love the most about caking --

ASorry not contributing anything to the OP's question but that's a beautiful cake :)

Check out the following youtube video, by Yeners Way, where they create and assemble a large ornate wedding cake.  It is over an hour long, but near the end, at about 1:18 he designs the piping for the cake.  Roland Winbeckler also has a tutorial.  I'm sure you could find other tutorials if you search.  Practice different scroll designs and then practice, practice, practice some more!  Have fun!

If there's a particular design you want on the cake, you can print it out on paper and then trace it on to parchment paper.  Then put the parchment paper on the side of the cake and use something like a dresden tool to trace over the image, leaving you some faint guidelines that you would then pipe over.

Thank you everyone for the replies! This helps a lot. I'm going to try the parchment paper/pattern idea.