Cake Decorating Has Begun!

Well I found this book "Creative Cakes anyone can make" at Ross for only $3.99 and I didn't realize it came with a "How To DVD". Well I told my friend about it and she wanted to do it with me, but they sold all the other copies so we are just sharing this one. We met on Tuesday and had our first trial run of decorating a cake...well we ran into some icing issues but all in all it we were pretty good at it. I read the book and watched the DVD before going to her house and she did the same...so we knew how to do it but we had never decorated before. Well our cake turned out to be a blank canvas and we tried about 10 of the tips out and different styles all over it...there wasn't an area that didn't get covered with some decoration. We did have problems making the roses - that lady made them look so easy to do but I couldn't get the hang of it. So the next day I youtubed cake decorating and a lady had a 2 minute video showing how she made them and BAM! It hit me and I realized how to do it and where I went wrong. A big issue was that the icing wasn't thick enough and the other big issue was....I was holding the tip upside down. Those two things will make a big difference. So last night I got out the left over yellow icing and added flour (I ran out of powered sugar) to make it thick and well they turned out really good! So my friend and I are going to do one more class together before our real class starts on July 9th at Hobby Lobby. They only charge $17.50 for 4 classes and they are giving us a $15 gift card to use on cake products...what a deal! We skipped Course I because the DVD taught us everything they would teach us in Course I which is why I have to practice because I don't want to look like we skipped Course I. I'm making my best friend's bridal shower cakes so they have to be perfect...I have a while to get good at it. Here are pictures below and keep in mind it was our first time & we were just doodling on it. The big green blob was us practicing the grass look with a particular tip. The roses were done last night...practice makes perfect.