Good morning,

I am making a cake tomorrow for a baby shower.  This is the cake I'm "trying" to do  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/143270831875864141/

The top of the cake will not have the owl in the 2D form, but 3D like this one:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/443886107005267421/

Forgive my inexperience here, I don't normally work with fondant.

The cake is covered in buttercream.  The little animals were made a couple of days ago in a 50/50 mix of fondant and sugar paste.  They've dried and are hardened.  The hills will be made of fondant only and applied to the cake.

My concerns are as follows:  

Can the fondant hills be put on the cake today without any problems?  

How do I attach the little animals to the hills/cake?

I'm afraid that my 3D owl will sink into the buttercream.  How can I prevent this?  Should I make him some kind of platform out of cardboard and hide it under the buttercream???

Any help on this would be very much appreciated!
Christina

On another note.  How in the world were the little animals made in the picture of the first cake?  I had to cut them all out with an exacto knife and it took me forever.  They don't look NEAR as good as I wanted them to.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/143270831875864141/

Yes you can put the fondant hills on today.

Attach the fondant pieces using either royal icing, chocolate/candy melts or edible glue.

For the topper, make a base out of 50/50 fondant gum paste, lay that on top tier then your topper. Attach as above. Another way to attach cake toppers is to insert a skewer/lollipop stick into the bottom, when its soft. Then you just stick that into your cake. If you use the edible glue, a little does the job, be careful not to use too much, because when it dries it can leave a shine on the fondant. HTH

http://sweetopia.net/2009/09/how-to-make-edible-glue/

The creator of the cake lists an x-acto knife as the tool used. A trick with using the x-acto knife to cut fondant/gumpaste, is to swipe it in shortening before you cut. I learn't this recently here on CC, can't remember who, sorry.  That's the way I would do it, printed a template the size I needed, on stock paper, and use that as my pattern to cut out the pieces. Use your finger tips to smooth any rough edges. Cute cake........

I'd just use a bit of water to attach...all mentioned above would work, too, either way.  I've only made a few 3D toppers, but I did not skewer the topper - just inserted a couple of supports (I use fat straws) level with the cake and rested the topper on that.

Caroline,

Thank you!  Yes, I did put a skewer in the bottom of the owl.  Mainly so I could hold it while putting it together, now I'm glad I did!

I eventually did figure out that using shortening on my exacto knife worked better.  I guess its just a matter of the more you do it, the better you get.  

640Cake,

Thanks for the straws idea, that sounds like it will work too!

You probably know this already, but just in case you are driving wit the cake, leave the topper in a separate box  (bubble wrapped or something) and attach to the cake on site. You've got this.....

Caroline,

Thanks again for the great advice!  Driving with this cake....UGH!  I get a stomach ache just thinking about it.  I live in the country with about 1 mile of gravel road with hills!!!  UGH!  I hate driving cakes!  But so far, I've never lost a cake....

Thank you!

C~