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!

Cake Class: Course 3

Tonight was the final night of course 3: Fondant and Gum paste. It was a fun class and I learned a lot. I hadn't worked with fondant or gum paste yet as I was kind of a chicken to attempt anything. I know am much more confident to work with either. I can now make some neat flowers and do more designs on cakes. I can't wait to put some of my new skills to use.

 Above and below are views of the bow I made during the first week of the course.

 Below is a gum paste rose.

 Shot of the carnation, rose, rose bud, and calla lilly

 Rose bud

 Calla Lilly

 Mum

 Final Project. Travis chose the design. The cake came out pretty good for my first attempt with fondant. I have a few things to work on, but overall I am very happy with how this cake turned out. Hopefully everyone Travis works with will enjoy it. He will be taking it in tomorrow.

I have one last course I will be taking. It is course 4: advanced gum paste flowers, which is all through February. I can't wait to also get started on the next baby shower cake for my mom's club. It is going to be an awesome cake! Pictures will be posted after the shower. I can't spoil it after all! :)

Cake Class: Course 2

I decided to start taking the Wilton Cake Courses. I started off in December taking course 1: Decorating Basics. This month, Travis was a wonderful husband to let me out 2 times a week for 2 classes! Tonight was my final for course 2: Flowers & Design. First, I'll take you back a few weeks.

 The first week we used gum paste and made button flowers (top) and pansies (bottom). These were pretty straight forward and were meant to start easing into using certain tools.

The second week of class we got into royal icing. I have no photo from that week as my icing flopped by the time I got to class. Royal icing is very temperamental. It was perfect at home, but by the time I got up to Michael's, the difference in temperature and/or humidity caused it to flop.

 Week three we worked with royal icing again. I tired to fix my icing, but it still wasn't the best. I was able to get my flowers to come out a little better. Above is a lilly. It came out the best of my flowers for the night. Below is supposed to be a daffodil. The icing wasn't perfect so I couldn't get the flower perfect.

 And now we come to week 4. The final project. Tonight was learning a reverse shell and the basketweave. It was also our chance to show off what we learned and decorate a cake! Below is my final project. Travis chose the flowers for the cake. I decided to stay away from the royal icing for now until I can practice more with it.

For my final project I made more button flowers and some leaves from gum paste. I did a basketweave around the outside of the cake with a reverse shell around the top and a shell border at the bottom. Overall I think the cake came out pretty good.

Tomorrow night we will be eating the cake! Travis has invited folks over from work to come enjoy my master piece and coffee! I sure hope they like it!

Next Monday is my final for course 3: gum paste and fondant. I'll be sure to post all the pictures from that course. Next month is course 4: advanced gum paste and fondant.