The gherkin & the pasta machine

It's only 1 week until Cakebook 2012 and although I've got my cakes baked, my icing bought and my cakeboard, I wanted to have a practise/try of the icing for the cake.

I have grey icing and black icing for the windows and black icing for the pointy top.
I have light grey icing for the pavement (my cakeboard) and some lego people to stand around the base of my cake.

What I haven't had a practise with is rolling/laying the icing on the windows.
As you can see, the windows seem to look like they twist around the building, and I want to try and recreate this.

I decided early on that I was not going to make individual windows, because it would probably drive me round the bend and make my eyes bleed. So I've been experimenting with strips of icing.

The Pasta Machine Experiment...
My other issue is that my icing needs to be rolled the same thickness all the way around - so I've been playing with the pasta machine for this - which actually works quite well.
Although each piece needs trimming along the edges, it does give quite a good effect.  The pasta machine also gives me a really good long strip too.

Wrapped around a bottle it actually looks quite good.

I've scored the other windows in and will probably finish (on the day) with piped white icing.

I need to have the same width strips of icing too - a simple calculation based on the circumference of cake will tell me how wide they need to be, and I'll make myself a template to use for consistency.