I have been practicing all night and most times I make a rose the petals have a ripped/torn edge on the top. What am I doing wrong? I am using a butter/shortning mix for my BC and I am using tip 104. Please any input would be great. Thanks in advance!
Beth
Your icing might be a tad stiff.
On the plus size, it's more realistic 
Can't remember where I heard this, but add corn syrup or piping gel if icing is too stiff causing it to rip. May have come from my wilton instructor.
Don't know why it's supposed to work, i personally like the edges slightly ripped for a realistic effect.
The softer icing may have been not mixed long enough to give it the body to stand up. It could be also that your icing was too warm. If you have hot hands it will warm the icing and cause it to have no body. You could try putting the decorating bag in the refrigerator for about 5 minutes. If you do this remove the tip first or the metal will make the icing in the tip get too stiff.
The icing should not be so stiff you cannot squeeze it easily out of the bag.
hth.
Make sure you have enough pressure on the bag when you squeeze too. My Wilton instructor told me that it was the reason why I was getting torn edges. I am sure there can by several reasons but that definitively helped me.
I have been practicing all night and most times I make a rose the petals have a ripped/torn edge on the top. What am I doing wrong? I am using a butter/shortning mix for my BC and I am using tip 104. Please any input would be great. Thanks in advance!
Beth
Work a little piping gel into your icing. Also open up the end of your tip a bit more.
HEY! I have awlays had that same problem! Wanna know my very lazy way of fixing this problem... I buy premade frosting and add powdered suger! I know, I know, this is bad bad advice, but for me it is what works best. Maybe someday I will try the piping gel trick though!
I have the same problems you have. So one day when I was using some Victoria Secret hand lotion (from the tube) I noticed it looked just like IMBC looks in other peoples pictures. I thought, I wonder if I could practice making roses with it. So that is what I did. 
hey were beautiful roses. Great for practicing with. Just can't try and slide them onto something. You can only practice on the nail tip then put it back in the bag and practice again. I know it sounds kind of goofy but I sure thought they looked pretty. I took a picture of it. I'm going to post it right now if you want to take a look. Maybe someday I'll try using real IMBC. I made it once a long time ago and it seemed very labor intensive. But I do love the look of it on a cake because of the smoothness of it. *I'll have to post it on the main page. I don't know how to do it here).
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