My Wilton Portfolio – Chapter #2: Floral Finish and Rosebud Boutonnieres

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You’re probably thinking I abandoned my Wilton Portfolio Project with only the first chapter.  Not so!  I just haven’t written about it, which is silly since this is a blog and it depends on my actually writing stuff after I’ve made it and decorated it.

This particular project is from the second class – Flowers and Cake Design.  The medium I’m working in is Gum Paste, Fondant and Royal Icing

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #4: Final Project

I finished this class several weeks ago and just realized that I never wrote this post!  It’s a shame too because all of my flowers pulled together nicely.  The last class is always final project day and I decided to pull together all the flowers I made (including some more I made during the last week) into bouquets.

We still had a couple of things to learn.  Here is lesson plan for this course.  The red, bold text is what we covered in the final class:

• Blossoms
• Gerber Daisies
• Sweet Peas
• Ivy Leaves
• Lily Leaves
• Briar Rose
• Stargazer Lily
• Stephanotis
• Assemble Blossoms, Leaves and Bouquets
• Using Flower Spikes

 

I was excited to get my Stargazer Lily put together.  It is one of the most grown flowers today and if I ever want to take myself seriously decorating cakes, I’m going to need to be able to make this one.

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #3

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We’ve had a couple classes of making parts of flowers and leaves.  When you’re dealing with ornate flowers, they have to be made in pieces and then fully dried before assembling and detailing them.

Tonight, we pull together almost all of our flowers.  Also, we make some of the other flowers we finished prettier.

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #2

One of the things about making these ornate gum paste flowers is that you have to make them piece at a time and dry them thoroughly before moving to the next step.  By “dry them thoroughly” I mean 24-28 hours.  The classes are jam packed and fun, but maybe the blog posts aren’t as interesting as when I was turning out multiple designs every class.

So this class is a lot of prep work again, but I promise you’re going to see some incredible flowers after the third class.  Or at least I hope you will - it kind of depends on my skill level.  And of course there’s a lovely flower we started and finished in class in one evening.

Here is lesson plan for this course.  The red, bold text is what we covered in the class:

• Blossoms
• Gerber Daisies
• Sweet Peas
• Ivy Leaves
• Lily Leaves
• Briar Rose
• Stargazer Lily
• Stephanotis
• Assemble Blossoms, Leaves and Bouquets
• Using Flower Spikes

If you’re paying attention to the syllabus, you’ll notice I kind of skipped over the Sweet Peas.  We didn’t actually, but we only formed the Sweet Pea base.  We’ll be finishing them in class #3, but tonight we started out making several leaves.

First was the Ivy Leaf.  If you think it is as easy as cutting out a leaf shape and then drawing a pattern on it, you’re SO wrong.  You have to roll out the gum paste on a grooved board.  This creates a ridge on the back of your leaf.  Since these leaves are grouped together, you have to attach a piece of florist wire to the back using the ridge to keep it in place.  Easy, right?

Yeah, not at all.

Once you get the wire attached, you have to press the leaf impression to get the veins.  The impression mat was not cooperating for me and I had to try a lot of different positions to get the imprint visible.  Pressing around the wire is difficult because you’re not dealing with thick gum paste.  It has been rolled thin, so pressing too close to the wire exposes it.

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Ivy Leaf

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #1

This week I started the final Wilton course in cake decorating – Advanced Gum Paste Flowers.  I am excited and a little bit sad.  I couldn’t wait to get started, but I’ve really enjoyed these classes and am sad that soon I’m going to be done with them.

Gum Paste and Fondant – Class #3

I can’t believe there is only one class left after this!  I’m having so much fun with this class that time is just flying by.  I signed up for the final course in the series too, Advanced Gum Paste Flowers with Maria.  Of course, now I’m getting ahead of myself… let’s get back to Gum Paste and Fondant and what I learned this week.

Here is what we covered this night from the class lesson plan for this course:

• Gum Paste and Fondant 101
• Bow Loops
• Mum Base, Rose Base
• Carnation Base
• Assembling a Bow
• Tinting Gum Paste and Fondant
• Basic Principles of Floral Cake Design
• Calla Lily
• Rosebud and Rose
• Carnation
• Calyxes and Leaves
• Assembling the Calla Lily
• Daisy
• Mum
• Covering a Cake Board with Fondant
• Elements of Fondant Cake Design
• Creating Geometric Designs Using Cut-Outs, Overlays, and Inlays
• Eyelet, Ruffle, and Ball Borders

These flowers are the most difficult I’ve made to date.  It took several tries for me to get some pretty enough to photograph.  Then there’s the mum, but here I am getting ahead of myself again.

We started with Daisies.  Using the daisy cut-outs takes a lot of time to perfect.  Even with the most precise cutting, you’re going to end up with rough edges that you’ll have to clean up.  Considering you are working with gum paste, it is going to have to be done quickly.

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Gum Paste and Fondant
Daisy