And I have a few questions

I have done ONE gum paste rose just playing around, but now i have to do them for a fall wedding

do i color the gumpaste the fall colors or do i just use the petal dust on the white gumpaste

or do i color the gum paste and still use the petal dust??

can anyone give me some advice??
thanks so much

D. All of the above
Not that I am not the master of gumpaste, but I do make some pretty roses. I use a combination of coloring the gumpaste, spraying color, painting color and painting dust.
Coloring some of the paste lets you have natural color variation (i.e. darker in the middle when making petals) - then you can get a true two-tone (or more) rose with say pink in the middle going to gold at the tip. It's all about how much effort you want to put in reality. Your customer may be just as happy with some autumn colored "Duff" roses (nothing wrong with these at all - please don't get me wrong).

Mandy,

If you've got plenty of time and gumpaste, why don't you take small amounts of the gumpaste and try a little of each. That way you can see what suits you. I may like one way and the next person wouldn't put them on their dog's cake and vice versa. Actually that's a bit of a stretch, I hope, but I think you can understand what I'm saying. Have fun with them most of all. Good Luck and HTH

I almost forgot what my DH said to me one evening when I was making roses and carnations. I was getting kind of irritated because they wouldn't each do the same thing and the gumpaste just didn't want to do what I wanted it to do. I had said something about them not looking alike and my DH said, God didn't even make all the flowers the same. Don't worry about it. He was so right.

For pale flowers, start with pale gumpaste in the base color you want. Dust the petals before you attach them to get the variation of color needed (fading from dark to light), and also dust with silk white luster dust if you want a bit of sparkle. The silk white barely mutes the color. If you don't want sparkle, leave out this step. For the non-sparkle roses, steam them to set the color and to take away the powdered look. You will be amazed at how well this works. Just be sure to not leave the flowers or leaves in the steam for more than a few seconds or you will melt them.

For darker colored roses, start with a darker gumpaste. This way you won't have to dust quite as much extra color to get a nice look and depth of color. Again, steaming will make them look amazing.

You can use any left over gumpaste colors combine lightly to make autumn colored leaves. Dust these with autumn colors and steam them as well.

I forgot to mention that all things to be steamed must be completely dry before steaming.

Hope this helps.

Michele