Sugarpaste Practice

My cousins are celebrating their 40th anniversary quite soon and my mom and I volunteered to make the cake. We want it to be really special so I'm practicing making gumpaste/sugarpaste flowers (I haven't made any since my wedding cake and final exam showpiece at school so I definitely needed practice). Right now the plan is a 4 tier white fondant covered cake with brown accents. We want a few, large, hot pink flowers for a pop of color, so my plan is to try a bunch of different flowers and decide on one type to make.

I made a ranunculus (pictured at the top of the post). It's rather like making a rose, but you don't have to frill/curl the edges so it's a bit easier. Of course you also have to put on a ton more petals so it's much more tedious. I really happy with it, especially for my first try. Unfortunately they are a little small for the cake because we want a few larger flowers not clumps of smaller ones.

This is really a rose's best angle, which makes it difficult
to put them on cakes unless you are clumping them.  

I also practiced roses. It came out pretty darn well! The only problem with roses (I think this is a general problem that is accentuated in my roses because I still need to practice them) is that unless the rose is in full bloom (to the point of being close to wilting if it was a real rose) the base (where the bud meets the stem on a real rose) is a bit blah and unsightly. You really need a bunch of roses or some foliage to cover the base--you can see how good they look in a clump here. Again, we only wanted a few of the same flower, so roses were out.

Pretty, but not exactly a tulip...

I was really hoping for tulips. They were my favorite flower from school since they were both easy (enough) and realistic. Unfortunately I don't have a tulip cutter and can't find one for even a semi reasonable price. I figured I'd go for a Dutch tulip (rather than a parrot tulip like I did at the FCI) since for that you can make do with an oval cutter. It wasn't perfect, but that wasn't really the problem with this flower. The real problem is that I have nothing like an egg mold to let the petals dry in. The mold is the perfect shape to curve the petals, which gives them a realistic look and makes them easier to arrange when you wire them together. I used a spoon--a suggestion I saw online. It did not work. Either I'll have to shell out (get it, egg...shell...okay, I know, that was terrible) absurd amounts of money for a egg mold that only has 6 half egg indents or I'll have to figure out another flower.

Saving the best for last, I tried my hand at two types of dahlias: a mum-style one and a honey comb one. I started with the mum-style, which was a good thing. It came out lovely and the honey comb was a pain to make (not too difficult, but terribly tedious) and I decided to scrap it about 5 minutes after starting. So back to the mum-style dahlia. It was a bit harder because of how you have to frill every petal, but the results are worth it. I should say that the photo definitely doesn't do the flower justice. Also the matt white isn't great, it really needs some petal dust to help bring out the contours of the delicate petals. Hopefully you'll have a chance to see some nice, colorful dahlias, as I plan to make some magenta(ish) ones for the cake.