Final class

Tonight ended my fourth and final class of Course 4: Advanced Gum Paste Flowers. It was a fun, yet challenging class. It was great to meet new people and learn some really neat flowers. It sad my cake classes are over....at least for now. Hopefully I can take a cookie class with my instructor. That's only a one night class though, but I would love to learn how to do some fun cookies.

Below are pictures of some of my work from course 4. After taking this course, I can see why some cakes are as expensive as they are. These flowers really do take time to make. I spent quite some time on these and they aren't even perfect. Sure once I practice more they will take less time, but they will not be something you can pump out in 5 minutes. Some take days to make as you have to let the gum paste harden. They are also SUPER fragile. I barely set one down today and the tip of a petal broke off! :(

Gerber Daisies, Small Blossom Flower and the center for the Sweet Pea. The Gerber Daisies were my favorite, but are incredibly fragile when they dry. Can you guess why they were my favorite?

Briar Rose. This was a fun one to make. My coloring of it came out terrible, so I decided not to post the final picture, plus part of it got broke with all the transporting to and from class. Just imagine the petals lightly dusted in pink!

Various ivy and lily leaves for the final projects.

Sweet Pea with Ivy leaves. This is a fairly simply flower to make, but takes some time. The center has to be made in advance so it can harden. Then the rest of the flower can be finished. After it hardens you can dust the edges with pearl dust. I didn't do that though because I forgot to do it before class!

You might notice there is a difference between the center and the two edge flowers. I only had two completed Sweet Peas and after putting my final project together my instructor said "looks nice, except your supposed to have 3 as bouquets are made with 3 or more." Oops...luckily one of my classmates Emma had a spare!

Stargazer Lily. This is a fun looking flower, but kind of a pain to put together. First when I went to look over the list of supplies I needed for class tonight, I didn't realize I needed to have 3 wide white lily leave and 3 narrow white lily leaves. Oops...as I scramble to make 3 wide ones and hope they harden enough before class! That was at 4 pm today!!!

The biggest challenge with putting this one together is just holding the leaves in place as you wrap florist tape around the stems. You finish it by adding 3 green lily leaves. Mine ended up a little close together, but overall it came out nice.

I learned a lot in this class. First, is that before I decide to apply to become a Wilton instructor, I need far more practice with this course! Second, it is amazing what you can do with gum paste. And third, I'm going to miss taking the courses and getting me time....and giving RC and Travis their guy night as well!