Fondantry: Lego Cake

Hi everyone! Sorry for having been gone for so long, both Hayley and I have been preoccupied with other things. For instance, for me, I've had college and Uni taking up my time.
We're still doing cake stuff, but not very often and not updating frequently either. In fact, these pictures were taken on the 8th of February!
So, let's come back to the Lego cake. My brother turned 18 on the 7th of February, so Hayley and I made a cake for his party, that was the next day.
He has Autism, thus he is not great at decision making - so we were really proud of him when he said he wanted a Red lego brick for his birthday cake!
Unfortunately, the red didn't turn out so well - in fact it was pretty desaturated - Paste colours are something we are going to invest in next time we need bright colours!
Anyway, here are the pictures involving the process!

The cake was made up of two flavours - chocolate and vanilla, again another decision made by my brother!
(Red lego brick for reference.)

Vanilla buttercream - crumb coating.

Final coating

We are starting to find rolling fondant hard. We first tried turn on our aircon which has helped stop fondant sweating. But our main problem is space. We don't have a large enough chopping board, but we can't roll on the bench because it's made of a material that retains black dirt (It may actually be the material itself, and not dirt.) Also, people suggest using vegetable shortning - but, it still gets insanely stuck! We just can't figure out how to get clean, smooth fondant using vegetable shortning! HOW?!! So because it gets sticky we resort to a lot of vegetable shorting - which ruins the fondant essentially. I just don't get it... these "tips" just don't work like people say they do.
Sorry for that rant! Let's continue!