with my roses? I worked all day on these *&6^ RI roses and they are turning out like my BC roses...flat and lifeless....Starts out with the bud problem...it needs viagra (SORRY) bad.....But the RI has to be stiff enough because it hurts my hand to squeeze it out...please give your opinions...and by the way..I posted this before and for some reason it hasn't posted..so if you see me twice I am truly sorry
I can see what you mean with your roses. (They are pretty....but don't look a whole lot like roses.)
I'm no expert (but I finished Wilton II without any major problems).
If it hurts to pipe your Royal Icing...it's probably too stiff. thin it down a bit. Even slightly soft Royal will make nice roses.
You are right...a bigger (taller) bud will make your entire rose more shapely. Also, don't forget to angle your tip and you make the outer petals. You will rotate your tip from completely straight up on the inner petals to almost flat with the base (nail, cake, whatever) for the outer row.
I must admit that I like the shape of the buttercream roses so even when I'm using Royal I prefer the #104 tip....but that's just a personal preference.
Hang in there. You will get better each time.
LOL. My roses always look like this. Thankfully, I have about one order a year that asks for them!
~C
OK from the looks of it, you may be pulling your tip away from the base as you pipe. That gives you a flat look like that. Your tip should be right up against the mound from start to finish on each petal. If you are pulling your tip away at all then the icing won't flair out. As far as your first petal goes, What I tell my students is to start piping and with even pressure pull straight up and turn the nail one complete turn all while holding your pressure as steady as possible. When you finish the turn bring the end of that peral all the way down to the bottom of the base. Thats how you get height to the center. Good Luck and keep practiing. Remember it takes 200+ bad roses before you make one good one. 
If you royal icing is flattening, it wasn't made correctly or melting due to the presence of fat or shortening.
It must be perhaps in a absolutely clean bowl, no fats on anything that it comes into contact with: the bag, the tip, everything.
I don't know the recipe that you are using but here's mine.
6 T warm water
3 T meringue powder
1 # powdered sugar
Initially, the mixure will seem rather thin when you begin mixing it. It must be mixed for 7 to 10 minutes. If at 4 or 5 minutes, it is stiff and matte colored, there wasn't enough water at the start. It should seem very runny when you start. By the 7 minute mark, it should be very fluffy and stiff. By 10 minutes, it should be matte and stiff enough to pipe roses. It should not seem like stiff glue but more like very stiff marshmallow fluff.
Oh thank you all sooo much...the RI was never runny, in fact when I first started it balled up..but I did follow the directions in the Wilton book. I will try your recipe.. and as for shaping my flower when I started my base I tried to make my base wider then what the it said in the book because the fact no matter how straight I piped on the nail it always fell over and was hard to pipe. Thinking about the petals, I know that I took my tip off of the bud when I rounded to end it, but I think it was because the darn bud kept falling over. I will try again today! Thanks a lot for your tips...I will try another 100 today LOL and see if I can't get a few good ones out of it! Should the RI feel like marshmallow fluff also? Or will it be sorta hard to pipe? TIA
OK from the looks of it, you may be pulling your tip away from the base as you pipe. That gives you a flat look like that. Your tip should be right up against the mound from start to finish on each petal. If you are pulling your tip away at all then the icing won't flair out. As far as your first petal goes, What I tell my students is to start piping and with even pressure pull straight up and turn the nail one complete turn all while holding your pressure as steady as possible. When you finish the turn bring the end of that peral all the way down to the bottom of the base. Thats how you get height to the center. Good Luck and keep practiing. Remember it takes 200+ bad roses before you make one good one.
I have to agree with this. It looks to me like you are bringing each petal out and away from the base instead of up and back down. You can see this on your outside petals. I keep my tip firmly touching the base and go from the bottom of the base up in an arc (like a rainbow) and back down to the bottom again *DO THIS FOR EACH ROW* I have seen people trying to start the first rows like half way up the base and they are wobbly. If you start from the bottom, or at least very close to the bottom you will have a very strudy base. At least that is how I do it. I am sure others have beautiful roses doing another technique, but this works well for me, and I think my roses are pretty good. Good luck you will get it!
Also make sure with each row your wrist is rotated more horizontal (like for my last row I have my wrist at a 2-3 oclock. It looks like your last rows are a little upright.
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