I need some help- I am finishing my 3rd wilton course (fondant and gumpaste) and I love and adore making flowers. However, I cannot seem to get the hang of brushing colour onto flowers to get that realistic look!

At the moment I am sure part of the problem is the cheap brushes that came in the wilton sets, but I am wondering if there is anywhere else I can learn about this? Does anyone know of any good tutorials/videos/books that could help me figure this out??

Hi, I took the same Wilton class you just did last year and it's very limited on what they teach you about finishing flowers so they look real. Yes, those brushes are really cheap and I found them too stiff to use with petal dust. I just went to the paint brush area of Michaels and bought myself so nice soft bristle brushes. I believe Wilton is now selling better quality bush sets too but haven't tried them. I did try their petal dust powders and do like how they work on flowers so far. I recently used them on the flowers of a pink blossoms cake I made. I also found this tutorial on youtube which helps to explain the different powers out there:

I also got some great tips from watching cake shows on tv as they are always making and painting flowers for their cakes. I hope this helps!

I make most of my flowers white, then color them in layers of petal dust. You may want to use a Sable brush (I prefer # and really load up your brush. I have a lot of flowers I just posted in my album so there are a lot of example of what you can do in layers. (My avitar shows flowers that were also covered with layers of dust.) Good luck.

My post should say number eight brush, but for some reason I got acute smiley face. A number six is also good.

Nicholas Lodge (ISAC) sells instructional DVDs on flower making that are tremendously helpful and reasonably priced. Just browse through his DVDs at www.nicholaslodge.com.

Thank you for hte link to the videos, I will definitely have to check them out.

I have just bought some brushes, but just the deluxe wilton set, however, they are far better than those cheapy brushes I had before...

I'm taking a class with Ruth Rickey later this month that covers dusting flowers. She's doing dusting classes at Cake Camp, the ICES convention, as well as some other places. I'm not sure where you are located, but here is a list of events she is going to be at and it does tell you what she'll be teaching.

http://www.ruthssweetejustice.com/Category%20Pages/ruth%20rickey%20class%20schedule.html

She's located in OK City. This is the class I am talking there on the 23 and 24th.

http://www.oksugarart.com/Ruth%20Rickey%20Classes.htm