Helicopter Cake February 2013

I used carrot cake for the first time and it seemed to work pretty well for decorating. The helicopter itself is made of rice krispie treats covered in fondant. I used gum paste for the tail, landing skids, and rotor blades, but for some reason, my gumpaste didn't harden up as it should this time. I think I got too much liquid in it. So I ended up having lots of pieces crack and break and had to either do them over or make them work on the cake anyway. Because the main rotor blades wouldn't harden, I finally had to use wooden skewers wrapped in fondant to replace the ones I originally made. Unfortunately, since the skewers ran all the way through the blades, I had no way of making the blades spin like I had originally hoped (maybe I'm a bit too ambitious). However, the little rotor blades at the back of the tail did spin, so that was kind of cool! I used corn syrup mixed with gel food coloring to draw the lines---my first attempt doing this on a vertical surface since the disaster with the Fourth of July cake---and didn't have any problems with the colors running, but it does look a little messier than I would like. I piped the grass with icing and used fondant to make the helicopter pad.