England Rugby Ball

In February I made a cake for a friend at work, her partner loves rugby so I created a Red Velvet England Rugby Ball cake for him. There were tears and drama with this one, the cake was pretty huge and I struggled to get the shape right. I wanted it to look like it was sat in the grass, rather than do a complete rugby ball shape, I think that would have been too tricky for me, I'm still new at this! But I carved it well and put the frosting and icing on, left it overnight to harden before decorating it. But when I looked at it the next day the fondant wasn't smooth, it looked pretty rubbish, more like a cornish pasty than a rugby ball! I think I was a little hard on myself, I'd never covered anything this big before so it was to be expected it might not be perfect first time. So I peeled off the fondant and started again, luckily my second attempt was much better and I got the finish I wanted. Using coloured fondant I started to put on the detail, the rose took a couple of attempts and I ended up cutting it out as a whole and piping on the detail which I think worked well. Then came the lettering... As I am starting out and still fairly poor I haven't got any lettering stencils or cutters so each letter had to be cut out by hand. I had a little help from my boyfriend to get the sizing right and we got there in the end. Sticking them on was tough as the black icing seems to be a lot softer than the other colours, it has a habit of stretching. Then at around midnight I was making tufts of grass to finish it off! I was very happy with the end result, and so was the birthday boy.