3D Space Shuttle cake (with Tutorial) : Blast off into summer!

So last year, I made this space shuttle cake for my son's last day of school. I decided to make a tutorial for it. And I'm just getting around to posting it. Which is just like me. 

I used styrofoam for the bottom of the cake. And as you can see I cut my own cake board. Lol. It doesn't have smooth edges. 

Here are all the cakes that I used to make it. 

4 - 6" cakes

2 - 5" cakes

and 2 - 4" cakes

The cake board. 

More cake board info.

Putting it all together. 

I stacked it like this, and then realized that wasn't going to work. 

So I re-stacked it. From the top to the bottom: 4",4", 5", 6", 6", 5", 4", 4" . 

The carved cake! 

The cake has been covered in buttercream!

I had to put three sections of fondant on the cake, so that it would work. When I tried to drape one piece of fondant over the cake, it just kept ripping. 

The final picture of the cake! 

A little note...

The school mascot is a dog, so we use a little paw print around the school. 

I must have added some buttercream dots for some reason. 

And finally here it is, in the class room.