Gardenias Cake

One of my girlfriend asked for a birthday cake for one of her friends.  She told me that the birthday girl loves gardenias because it reminded her of a warm childhood memory so I wanted to make sure I did a good job on them.  To be honest, I didn't even know what gardenias looked like so I had to look it up.  I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Starting from the top left clockwise, I created petals and thinned/ruffled the edges to give it a more realistic look.  I then overlapped 5 petals at a time on a flower forming cup and repeated this two more times, adding them on top of the petals I just arranged.  On a separate forming cup, I overlapped 6 larger petals and put the flower that I made from the first cup on top of it.  I did the whole process a couple more times so that I had the 3 flowers for the cake.

I added a silver dragee to the center of each gardenia just because they're pretty :)

I also set some individual petals to dry that I would scatter on the cake. 

I chose a lovely blue color to cover the cake in so that the white of the flowers and birthday message would pop.  I arranged the flower that was going on the side first.

Added the other two on top of the cake.

Then the birthday message.

Scattered a few individual petals.

Ball border.

And the cake was ready to be picked up for the party.