I'm getting into more and more flower making as well as buying flowers and coloring them. My local cake store doesn't carry a lot of petal dust, they claim you can use powdered food color. What do you think? Powdered color or actual petal dust?

I have bought and tried chalk, I don't like it. It stains everything, including my sable brushes (and yes I got the right kind).

Thing is, I bought CK's pink powdered color, opened the bottle and as a dust, this stuff is red. How would you dilute this to dust pink?

Thanks in advance,

Jen

Jen, you can add cornstarch to the dust to lighten up the color.

I use petal dust or grated pastels myself, just depends on the color I am looking for. I buy all of my petal dusts online and my pastels from the craft store.

.......bought CK's pink powdered color and as a dust, this stuff is red. How would you dilute this to dust pink?..........


As was mentioned above mix it w/cornstarch.
*That* is exactly why one uses dusts. Your store owner does not know what's going on. Dusts are made for use right out of the container - and come in such an array of colors one does not have to take time to mix and mix until they come up w/the color/shade they want.
I remember a store owner in CA who refused to offer dusts becasue *Then they won't buy my paste/gel colors* ! No, she was NOT a decorator - and it shows with such thinking.

Crystal colors are a food coloring dust that you can use for both coloring icings/fondant and dusting with. The bonus to them or using other powder food coloring is that it is edible.

Petal dusts are usually non toxic, which is not the same thing as edible. The idea behind them is that they are going on parts of your cake that are not meant to be eaten. They are in actually probably the same thing you would get by grating out non toxic artist chalks.

OK, thank you CCers, I thought I knew what you all are telling me now. I know the cake shop owner is seriously clueless on how to use the stuff she sells and doles out some of the worst cake advice, but she is also money grubbing so I was shocked when she directed me away from the luster/petal dusts at $5/jar to the powdered colors at $3.50 a jar. I would have thought she would stock and try and sell the more expensive item. Well, I guess she was in a way because she just got in disco dust and was trying to get me to buy some of those at $6/jar. Soooooooo not my cake decorating style.

I don't want to mess with mixing all my colors regularly, so I'm ordering dust. Thanks again!

Where can you buy Crystal colours?

Crystal colors are from sugarpaste.com  They're pure powdered food color that is edible and FDA approved.

You can also buy Elite Colors from the sugarart.com  same as described above.

Pristine powders from http://www.pristinepowders.com/ are the same as the 2 listed above.