Two Tier Cake - My First Time

This is my first two tier cake - both the bottom tier and top tier are 2 flavors, dark chocolate and strawberry with strawberry buttercream and strawberry marshmallow fondant. It was also my first time making fondant! This was made for my daughter's 19th birthday in May.
The fondant was easy to make, simple instructions etc, but it doesn't roll out nearly as smooth as Wilton fondant. The cake looked like it had acne scars - it was very pitted which explains the over abundance of whimsical flowers everywhere! The fondant sure tasted a lot better but it did not give the smooth texture and results that I was hoping for.
I used the good old interwebs to learn about making a 2 tiered, stack on stack cake as we had not done the "tall cakes" class at Michaels yet. The top tier is a 6 inch round so I needed a 6 inch round thin cake circle. I also needed dowels of some kind. Since it was going to be only 2 tiers and the top was small, I went with plastic "straw" type dowels that I picked up at Flour Confections. They look like a bubble tea straw. They are easy to cut to size with a snip of the scissors. I also needed a 1/2" thick cake board to support the weight of the tiered cake. I purchased this at Flour Confections as well, I should have gotten a 12" but I got a 10" which served anyway. The bottom tier is 8".
I'd love to hear from you how you have made out with making your own marshmallow fondant and 2 tiered cakes.