Cake Decorating 101

So, I don't know if I'm the only girl who grew up having never baked or decorated a cake, but here I am at 26 learning how to do both. I came across a cake decorating website and it sparked my interest. I'm not artistic per say, but I'd like to know how to make those neat character cakes and other simple things for kids' birthdays and other occasions. I signed up at Michael's for a Wilton cake decorating class. Here are some of my initial results (I can't say they are great, but I'm sort of proud of my first little cake)!

I baked a 6" cake from a mix and torted it with that handy metal gadget in the background. I didn't have to worry about being accurate with a knife, I just set the cake on the counter and ran the wire through. Neat-o!

This probably looks a little messy, but once I torted the cake, I put the bottom layer on my cake stand and put a "dam" of frosting around the edge of it. This is because I was using raspberry jam as my filling and didn't want it to seep out the edges and show through the white icing. So I edged the layer, added the filling and put the top layer on. Then I iced the whole thing.

The last picture is the final result after my night at class. The dent in the border happened in the car on the way home. Keep in mind I had just learned the techniques and practiced a couple of time before they released us to use some of the stuff we had learned on our actual cakes. I wouldn't recommend writing in yellow icing, but like I said, we were mainly just playing around with what we had learned - I didn't have any design in mind when we started. Enough disclaimers! By the way, it tastes great!!