Decorating Course... Part 5

After last week's cake, I was very excited, since that went so well, and we were to learn gumpaste. I was thrilled, that was one of the main reasons I'd joined class! We learnt a few flowers, basic easy ones, but it was super fun!

The class began with us learning to make gumpaste, which is actually really similiar to fondant, except there's no egg white! Since we'd all already made fondant, this was actually quite easy for us! The instructors always teach us to to judge the correct consistency, rather than giving an estimate figure! As I learnt, it must be firm, but still moist enough to be rolled, and used. They also provided with a few tools for decoration, and petal cutters, that we needed to form the flowers.

They first they had us to, to get a little used to gumpaste, were simple plunger flowers. I loved how easy they were, and made too many :P Unfortunately, we don't get good quality plungers here, I'm going to have to wait for someone who's coming down here!



At the end of the class, after they had dried, we made swags/swirls? I forgot what it's called, but were made these using them -



As you can see, a LOT of the petals are broken. I thought I had clicked a picture of it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. So I clicked a picture today, a week later! I didn't bother with drying it up, since I knew I wouldn't have much use of it! luckily I hadn't thrown it out!

The first actual flower we learnt was the lily. The rains actually work in our favour for once, since it gives us much longer to work with the gumpaste, before it gets hard! However, after drying, the tiny bits tend to break off, since they get a little moist, as you can see in the picture below -



That's what the flower we make is supposed to look like, however we will learn airbrushing and coloring in a later class. They demonstrated how to roll the gumpaste out, to what thickness, etc. and then we made our flowers -



That was my first flower ever, so I'm pretty pleased with the results. Obviously the center had to covered, and it needs a lott of work. I actually practiced a lot over the week, and made pretty good lilies [no idea what kind these are. I have practically zero knowledge of flowers]. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of time needed to dry them in the pouring weather, and they soon lost shape :( It's the practice that counts doesn't it :P


Next up, the hibiscus. I lovee this flower, in real life. My gumpaste ones leave a lot to be desired :P. Here a picture of they are supposed to look, [they didn't have a colored one around that I could click ]-



Versus how my first one looked -



LOL! You can clearly see which was my first petal, and how by the last one, I started getting a hand of the ruffling. I didn't make actual flowers later in the week, for practice, I just did a LOT of ruffling, which they said we needed to learn for next week's class. Unfortunately, as I said before, no pictures :(

Read more on this course -Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11