I'm starting to get nervous b/c I placed an order & some things are on backorder & I'm afraid I won't get my shipment in time to get my cutters.

I had planned on using the 5 petal cutters to make roses for a cake for next week & I'm now more nervous that I want to be. Even though the cake was for a benefit I was wanting to WOW people & hopefully bring in some orders. Now I'm stumped as what to do. I've made roses from cutting out single petals & I know I could do it again, but man that's time consuming!!!!

Should I just go ahead & make them that way anyway? This is just not what I need right now!

If you go ahead and make them with the single petal method and your cutter does not come in then great. If the cutter does come in, you have not lost the original flowers for they will keep and can be used on another cake in the future. I would go the safe route and make some now.

Another idea with no cutters and time wise it's pretty fast. You can knock out two rosed every five minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBWYlklg6AU&feature=related

I agree with better safe then sorry. I would suggest to start now. I use Edna's You Tube to make my roses. Only using a circle cutter. Like a PP said - if your cutters do come in you can always save the roses you already completed for a future cake. Hope it all works out for you.

Thats why I put the youtube tutorial using circles, I love the five petal cutter, but not everybody has
them. Anybody do have a circle cutter!

Thanks Caralinc!

Edna

Hi all, i've seen him make the carnation but at the end you can't get a really good look at it. it is cool the way he makes them, but i like the circle cutter better, small for the cone med and large, i usually us the med with about 10 circles, i'm going to try the 5 petal cutter i think cake boss uses that doesn't he?

Your situation is exactly why I am such a proponent of learning and teaching old-school techniques.

What would someone do if they just didn't have the money to buy cutters? Then they would have to make templates and cut their petals by hand, right?

Hopefully, you won't have to do that.

Theresa

like many i live on a fixed income, when i started making flowers, i tried everything to find a sponge that would work, i didn't have the 8 tools, so i tried every thing to make a ball tool, taped a marble to the end of a dowel, tried wood ball, then went to the hardware store and bought a glass cutter it has a ball on it. they look ok but not what they were supposed to, cindy such a sweetheart sent me a set of 8 tools and the sponge. wow what a difference. i bought the set of 3 round cutters, but i was cutting them with a templet first. i tried pill box tops, bottle caps, ect. each month i try to buy one item that's for the 1/2 coupons, hope your's come soon, oh this month i bought on line the pasta roller, 1/2 off 16 dollars on line and 2.98 shipping, i can't wait till it comes.

When I couldn't find the 5 petal cutter, I was using circles and it worked just fine. It is more time consuming than the 5 petal cutter but the end result is about the same.

Oh, roses are faster if you use Nicholas Lodge's gumpaste recipe than they are with the Wilton gumpaste, for me anyhow. It just dries faster and other than waiting for the cones to dry overnight, there's really not much waiting between attaching the layers.

Oh, I almost forgot, a smart older guy who owns a cake supply shop locally (but doesn't stock the 5 petal cutters) told me that back in the day, before they had all those fancy cutters, they would use the circle cutter and just lay the circles out overlapping in their hand, 5 at a time, put the rose cone in the center, wire sticking out between two fingers, and attach the 5 petals so that they were overlapping a little bit. I didn't have as much luck with that as I did with attaching the petals one at a time.

I knew I could count on CC!!! I think I'm going to try with the circle cutters. I'm going to be making my cones tonight & I'm wondering about how long my wires should be? Is 4" too short?

Somewhere on the internet is a video of someone making roses by rolling up maybe 5 circles. It looked so easy. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it or who did it. (Aren't I a big help?) But I think I got the link here on CC.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I found it! It WAS on CC, and it was Duff's method (from Ace of Cakes). It looks really simple.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo-886563.html

Here's another version of the same:

http://rebekahshouseofmunch.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/duff-roses/

I have done Duff's roses before & yes they are easy but I'm wanting a more sophisticated rose for this cake.

Well, cones are made & hung to dry. I just realized my dusts are all in that order too, dang it!!!! Guess I'll be coloring some gumpaste & not have as realistic roses as i was wanting

Use non-toxic chalk if your dusts don't arrive in time. You can grate it against a mesh strainer. Since nobody will be eating the gumpaste pieces, it's fine...that's actually how it says to do it in the Wilton gumpaste book, because they wrote it before there were so many petal dusts available. You can steam the roses over a pan of boiling water to set the chalk.

Do you mean like kids chalk or what's in an art section? Will it say non toxic?

Do you want a solid deep colour? Or solid paler colour? Or are you hoping to dust along the edges only?

I was originally going to make fall colored roses---darker red, & deeper yellow & oranges. This will be my first time coloring flowers with dusts (if they get here or I can find some chalks)

Have you ever dipped your GP flowers in solution to colour them? That could be a way to colour without dusts and the result can be quite vivid.

I haven't dipped them. Are there instructions somewhere?

You can startt with gumpaste color already in the colors you need.

Edna

Edna, those are beautiful. if mine turn out 1/2 as pretty I'll be thrilled! I did color my gumpaste this morning & will work on the flowers this afternoon. I was just hoping to give them a little more "depth". If I can I will, if I can't I won't. i did call about my order & it's a good thing I started b/c a few things were out of stock & it'll be another week before they get them in

I bought the same box today while I was out. lol . Some of those babies were expensive!!! I will be working at them this weekend, but I must say I am nervous--mainly with coloring. But at least I'm giving myself almost 1 week if I screw up!

Yes some of those chalks can be expensive, but so the petal dusts too!
Edna

Ok, now that I have all these roses I have no clue how I'm going to arrange them onto the cake. I had planned on arranging them in foam, but now that I'm staring at it it's WAY too tall. The cake is going to be an 8" round & about 4" high. I AM going to use these babies!!!! They took too long to make. And while I'm on that, how do you guys begin to charge for gumpaste flowers?

So,

1) How should I arrange? If I stick them directly into the cake, do you think that dipping the wires in food wax/parafin would hold up? Or should I do coffee sticks---but some of my wires are too thick for the sticks?

2) Will the flowers be too heavy if I put them directly onto the cake?

3) How do you decide how much to charge?

I really wish I weren't making a big deal out of this. And they turned out pretty good. I'll post after I get them onto the cake.

You can cover the wires in chocolate and stick them to the cake. You can put some buttercream behind them, they should stick in there fine as long as they have the wire for support.
Edna

Edna, w/ the buttercream should I put a mound of it in the center of the cake before arranging the flowers? How did you do the arrangement in the picture above? It seems to have the height I'm looking for, but my flowers are nowhere near as big.