Hi,
I'm doing my first cake for Thanksgiving... I made some fondant leaves this weekend, but compared to some pictures here, they look terrible. I have a few questions:
1. how do you get the veins in the leaves? I used a leaf cookie cutter, but there are no veins
2. I also painted chocolate over a silk leaf and it totally crumbled. Any advice on how to do this better?
3. The marbled look that many leaves have- how do you get that effect?

I am obviously new to this, but wow, I had no idea how hard coloring fondant is. I used a burgundy color for a leaf and after adding more color over and over, it still looks pink.

Help is much appreciated!

You can get a leaf veiner from a cake decorating supply place to add the veins. You can also use paint brush handle or toothpick to put the veins in by hand.
Hey, I see you're in Boston. Howdy neighbor! I'm not far from there.

I used a dog bone tool to "vein" the ones I did. To get the colors, I used yellow gumpaste and then airbrushed color on them. It worked perfectly for me - they looked pretty realistic. I also made acorns out of caramels and dark chocolate clay (they loved them!)

Here is the one I did:
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1500879

I just did a huge cake with a bunch of leaves. I have a silicone leaf thing (that did the veining) that I pressed into the colored gumpaste, then cut around each with an Exacto knife and let them dry on crumpled up foil. Then I colored them with various colors of food color mixed with vodka. To get some dimension, for example, I washed the yellow leaves with a light wash of brown color, let them dry and then did a light wash of green color on top of that.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1865489.html

I used a Wilton leaf cutter and a back if a silk leaf that had the plastic veins in it, they made a perfect vein. I also used a bribing took for some of them too.

I made a cake for my sister's engagement that had fall leaves on it. I used a mixture of fondant and gumpaste. The colours i used were yellow, red and terracotta . I would then add a little piece of each, form a ball and then roll it and cut it. Don't mix the colours together too much or you will not get the marbelling look you are after. I used one of the tools in the wilton gum paste tool set to indent my own veins and then I put some of the leaves in a flower former to give them some dimension.
It wasn't hard at all. I did a first batch and added brown and green to the colours I mentioned above but i did not like the final result so I just stuck to yellow, red and terracotta.
Good luck
Dina

I recently finished an autumn themed cake. I made the leaf veiners from my own tree with silicone (MYOM). I colored the gum paste pale ochre and after veining them, cut the outline out with a scalpel. I thinned the edges with a ball tool, then dried them on crumpled foil. I finished by dusting with various petal dusts. Then I steamed them to set the color and wired them on to florist tape covered wire branches. The acorns were gum paste made with a mold from the actual acorn and painted with Americolor.
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1827968

As it is almost Thanksgiving, I guess I am a little late with a response. But I hope this helps.