TIPS:

My husband and my son suggested that I pipe on something other than the house to get a feel for how the spackling was going to work.  I ignored them.  The spackling was a little dry so I put in about a teaspoon of water (in the container) and mixed it very well.  It can still be challenging to work with if you have never piped anything.  The roof of the house had scallops on it and I wanted to edge them in icing, it didn't work.  I was disappointed but decided just to cover the room in icing.  I just started pushing icing out of the bag and onto the roof, I took the icing tip and just swirled it around on the roof.  When I got to the other side I decided to try and use a knife and ice it like a cake.  I didn't like that, I doesn't have the swirls and in spots you can tell that the icing is thicker in some spots.  Next time I would just use the piping tip and bag.  I tried to put glitter on when the spackling was wet but that didn't really work because the glitter just falls off of it.  I waited until the spackling was dry all the way through and then I brushed glue on (lightly) and then added glitter.

When I started to make the cup topper I did not have a Styrofoam ball so I decided that I would take baking parchment paper and scrunch it into a ball and glue it down.  I took a Styrofoam saucer and traced the top of the cup, then cut out the circle.  I took the parchment and glued it to the circle.  Using the star tip I piped around the paper, up onto the paper until it was covered in spackling.  I didn't like the look of it so I took the tip and just started mixing it up and creating swirls.  Next I put on my decorations, gently pushing them in with a toothpick so that they would adhere.  The problem here was that the spackling slid down some what.  It slid down and off the circle and ended up much to big for the intended cup.  I would recommend using a Styrofoam ball cut in half and maybe watching some  videos.  It took about 2 days for it to dry all the way through. 

Since I was making mini cupcakes I reasoned that I didn't need anything inside the cupcake paper, I thought that it would hold up on its own.  It didn't.  One of them just kept spreading until it was almost flattened out.  I was able to push it back up when it started drying but if you look  close you can see where I pushed in the sides.  I would definitely recommend something to go in the liner so that you can glue the liner to it and just pipe on top of the ball.  Decorations will just fall off the spackling, have a toothpick handy so that you can gently push them into the spackling.  The straw that I put in kept sliding down, I would stick it in and then pull it back out, after the spackling has dried you can then glue it in.  Same thing for the peppermint candy.  I definitely want to do this again but I think next time  I will try not to be so exited about starting.  Oh, one last thing, do make sure to have every thing ready to go before you start.  It does take the spackling 24-48 hours to dry but it will form a skin and once it does I don't think it would be a good idea to add embellishments.  

Happy crafting.