#AtoZChallenge
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Letter P
Peony
Sugar Flower
My interest in cake decorating has mainly been in the making of sugar flowers, even when I was teaching. Maybe even before that. Decorating cookies is next in line and you can see some of those, over here.
As part of the process to create this flower, I had researched more than one source, and reviewed several blog tutorials, youtube videos,
and pictures, before starting the entire process.
While working on the flower petals and leaves, I referred back to a few pictures and videos but mainly attempted to create
without any extra input.
When I started to wire the flower together on the original attempt, the first sets of petals seemed a bit higher up than they should be. The next attempt at this flower, had them lower, and closer to the base.
Here you can see, my wired petals, waiting to be colored. I may have gotten carried away with the ball tool, just a bit.
At the time that I made this flower, I had a set of Wilton Peony cutters. The set was really nice but they did not have the proper cutters for all of
the Peony leaves.
I had seen so many different Peony arrangements where there were other types of leaves mixed in, and they were all
beautiful. With this in mind, I tried not to worry too much and figured any leaves might be better than no leaves at all.
Even so I still attempted to cut a set of leaves with an xacto blade, in order to include leaves that would have the proper shape for a Peony. I had a picture of the leaves in progress, but it seems to have disappeared. If I find it, I'll be
sure to add it later.
By the time I finished assembling the Peony, I was actually undecided as to whether I should add any leaves or leave it like
this.
I added the leaves anyhow, but was considering removing them at one point. I think the flower looked very pretty without the leaves too.
I'll have to remember to use a sturdier block of foam the next time I work on a large flower. I recall that soon after I
snapped this pic, my flower fell over.
I think I had a mini heart attack while watching it happen.
Fortunately, only a very small piece from one of the petals broke off, so all was not lost. Many thanks go to the thick towel
that buffered the fall. More importantly, thanks went to my former Wilton Instructor for sharing the tip when I was taking Course IV. I refer to it as "Always Know Where Your Towel Is".
The tip was to use a folded up thick fluffy towel underneath your hands while wiring, in case you dropped the flower or flower parts. Gum Paste is similar to ceramic when it dries. It can break if it hits a hard enough surface. Anyhow, my towel was still in place, which prevented the flower from breaking more.
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Here are more pictures of the flower. I actually had it stored safely in an empty fast food container for the longest time, before moving it to a display case. I love how this flower turned out and wanted to make more flowers. Of course it seemed that life had different ideas at the time, and pulled me away from creating more Sugar Flowers, as well as many other things.
Now that life is a little settled again, perhaps I will get back to making flowers. I am also thinking about working with cold porcelain or some non edible clays, to create flowers as sculptures. This would be for art that is not food safe. The skills seem to be transferable but I have no experience with non edible clays to know for sure.
One more picture, which is dated for the original post back in 2015, before life's nonsense or COVID Nonsense. These pictures and my memories of it or creating it, are all that I have left now.
This revised blog post was originally shared on my former blog, titled Something Sweet by Julie. The theme
of cake and cookie decorating for that blog was incorporated into the jmd CREATIVE blog. Any
new sweet related posts that would appear first on the home page, could be located later under the category of
SomethingSweet.
Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this post and will return tomorrow for Letter Q. Best wishes for a lovely day and evening, wherever you may be.
Julie
@jmdCREATIVE
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