I tried to make one of these last night and totally messed it up. I made the loops on Saturday but they kept crumbling and breaking, I couldn't get the upper layer of loops to behave at all, and in the end I just got frustrated and made a plain simple bow.

Can somebody please help me learn to make one of those magnificant loopy bows?

Thanks in advance!

People do them differently.. But I prefer to do mine out of gp...

I roll out my gp thin but not so thin that they can't lay on their sides... I do them in all different sizes... you ought to play with gp to see what length you will need... meaning if it goes ontop of a round then use your cake pan that it will go on top of.. use that as a guide to how long and wide you need your bow loops....

Straight fondant never worked for me... some use straight fondant with tylose powder mixed in.. some use fondant/gp mix and some use straight gp..

When using straight gumpaste it doesn't take long at all for the loops to dry hard

Depending on how much time I have, I either use 50/50 or straight gumpaste. I also wire each loop so I can place it into the cake where I want it. I use 18-20 for a bow on top of a 6" round.

Alot of times my bow matches my fondant accents on the cake, so I just add about 1 tsp of tylose powder per 12 of fondant. I let them dry for 2 days looped over a 1" OD PVC pipe suspended above the table.

I also cut a 3" circle out of the same fondant. For my "glue", I mix the fondant I used for the bow with hot water until it becomes a glue consistency. Some people use candy melts but most of my bows are custom colored and the glue matches perfectly this way.

I then apply the glue to the 3" circle, and lay my lower loops on it, and add more glue as needed with my upper loops. I probably use about 18-20 loops as well.

I make mostly 6" long strips, a few 5" strips, and a few 4" strips, just in case I need fillers.

The entire loop dries well in a couple of days. I like to give myself at least a week for a bow. Make sure you lift up the bow with a spatula by the very bottom, and not by a loop.

How do you wire a bow? I would like to make the smaller size like you sometimes see on the side edge of a cake, does this need wire?