Decorate The Cake: leaf

Showing posts with label leaf. Show all posts

Monday, September 9, 2013

Wafer Paper Flowers for Fall

Jeannie Gearin does it again with another amazing blog post. This time it is a great idea for a beautiful fall cake!

Wafer paper flowers offer an alternative to gumpaste flowers. They have a light and airy quality to them which makes for a beautiful cake design.

I learned a new technique from Lisa Berczel at the ICES Convention this summer, molding wafer paper flowers. The tools needed are pictured here. Plastic tweezers or silicone tipped tweezers are necessary for handling the wet wafer paper. Make a pattern for the petal shape that will fit into the mold, taking into account there will be some shrinking of the shape once it gets wet. Cut wafer paper petals using the pattern. Dip the petal into water by holding it with the tweezers. Lay the petal onto the mold and brush gently into place with a damp brush.

Leaves are made the same way. Brush the wafer paper onto the veiner to achieve the impression you want.

Craft punches can also be used to make flowers out of wafer paper. These punches were purchased at Michael's and Archiver's.

Flowers can be shaped by laying on a former and brushing lightly with water to take on a curved shape. The single layer flower is fragile and does not need to be dipped in water.

Plastic formers of any type may be used, but make sure they do not have a hole at the bottom or the wafer paper will also get a hole.

The fastest way to dry the wafer paper is under a heat lamp. I found my sugar box worked great for this. Leaves and single layer flowers dry in about 15 minutes. Multi-petal flowers take at least 30 minutes to dry. It is easy to see when they are no longer wet and ready for the next step.

Make centers for the flowers with gumpaste or a 50/50 mix. I mixed yellow and green together to get a more natural looking center.

Airbrushing is the best way to color the flowers. Hold the flowers with tweezers so they don't blow away! Add the color in layers and take care not to add to much because the moisture can distort the flower shape.

Attach the centers to the flowers using piping gel. Allow to dry and then attach to the cake with more piping gel, holding in place to set.

Play around with the layout of your design before attaching to the cake.

Wafer paper flowers are fun to make. I am looking forward to experimenting with this technique for butterflies and feathers.

Vendor Credits: Party Styling and Desserts by Jeannie GearinThepastrytip.com

Jeannie's Facebook Page

DTC Products Used:

Multi Center Mold

Hollyhock Blossom

Gardenia Leaf

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Acorns fall hunting theme

Thank you Sandy for a wonderful blog post!

I had a groom's cake for December that was to follow a hunting theme. The mother of the groom found a cake on the internet and it served as the inspiration of the groom's cake that I created for them. I cannot give credit to the original creator because I was sent the picture not the link on the web. Here is my interpretation of a hunters groom's cake.

They wanted a cake with camo, tree trunk, initials, arrow, deer antlers, gun shot shells, and bullets on the cake. It only seemed natural to use gumpaste fall leaves and some acorns to help to give this cake a "fallish" feel to the cake. The cake was placed on a camo puff base and a leather tooled look for a table cloth.

Decorate The Cake just came out with an acorn mold which was perfect for that extra finishing touch to this cake.

Supplies needed:
three piece acorn mold from DTC
medium brown fondant
dark brown fondant
brushes
gumglue
flower glaze (confectioner's glaze), optional
cornstarch, optional
freezer (too big for the picture)

Supplies needed

The three piece DTC acorn molds comes with two molds that are for acorn bases and the largest mold is for two different sizes of acorns caps. (Forgive me, I don't know the scientific terms for the two parts of the acorn.)

Using the medium brown fondant, mold an acorn cap for the size acorn you are making. The cap needs to be even with the top of the mold but slightly concave. You do not want it even.

Molding the Cap

I made one acorn base to begin with and popped it out and used it to approximate the amount of fondant I needed for each acorn base. Roll brown fondant into small log.

Fondant log

Place the fondant log in the mold and I used the end of a paint brush to push the fondant down into the mold. I wanted to be sure that I had the fondant completely shaped to the ball shaped base.

Pushing the fondant into all parts of the mold

Do not fill the base even with the top. I'd say about 1/16" from the top edge or the two pieces will not fit together properly.

Filling the base

Because the fondant will be misshapened if you pop it out of the mold fresh (at room temperature), I stick the mold in the freezer for about 10 minutes. Then one can pop the acorn base out with no problem.

Popping out frozen base

Cap and base completed

I used gumglue attach the base to the cap.

Gluing base

Here's a picture of the acorn together. The cap has a little bit of a gap between it and the base. Acorns often lose their caps so I didn't want the "fully" attached look.

Finished acorn

THE FOLLOWING IS OPTIONAL:
My acorn looked a little dull to me, so I painted the base with flower glaze (confectionery glaze). Here's a picture of what your bottle will look like if you haven't opened it for a couple of years. Hubby had to take it to the tool shed to get it open. Notice the tool marks on it. I have to admit when he left with the bottle, I was wondering what I would put the glaze it if he busted the neck of the bottle. (Note to self: open bottle every week or so to keep bottle from gluing shut.)

Tool marks on confectionery glaze bottle

An acorn cap has a dull dusty look to a real one, so I dusted the cap with cornstarch to dull it and give it that dusty look. Sorry no pictures of painting the glaze on the base or dusting the cap with cornstarch. I was in a hurry to finish up and get the groom's cake delivered. Guess I messed up on my time management on this cake.

Here is a close of of some of the acorns I placed around the base of the cake with the gumpaste leaves. More were placed on the top edge of the bottom tier.

Product Used:
Acorns Small

Sandy Swart aka sewsweet2
Check out my cakes at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2
or my cake photos on FaceBook: Sandy Swart Cakes
To see how I make my puff bases check out the tutorial at:
flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2/sets

Monday, August 20, 2012

"Let Them Eat Cake"- The Jabot Mold Sequel

All I can say about this next blog post is WOW! Joanne Wieneke outdid herself with the amazing combination of molds, creativity and some awesome talent.

I know that you have been waiting for the sequel of the Jabot Mold tutorial. This is it...

I have gathered a number of very beautiful and versatile molds to join the Jabot Mold Collection from DTC and incorporated them to a cake design, inspired by a quote "Let Them Eat Cake", the phrase commonly misattributed to the lady named Marie Antoinette....

(photos from Wikipedia)

If you scroll back, reading archives of DTC Blogs, a lot of molds have already been presented and how to use it. I used all necessary Tips and Techniques mentioned in DTC Tutorial blogs:
Lace Press Mold Tutorial by Morsels by Mark
New Applique Lace Molds by Sherrie Ortiz
Bridal Motif Lace by Renea Feagin
The Jabot Mold by Joanne Wieneke
Tuscan Jewelry Bowl by Joanne Wieneke

This should be easy, all you need are: fondant or gumpaste, shortening, gumglue, royal icing , palette knife or plastic clay knife, toothpicks, rolling pins, small scissors, paint brush, some gold and pearl dust and a lot of patience and a ton of time....

Here are the list of molds that I have used for this cake: