I was reading the instructions for making royal icing sunflowers on the sugarcraft website. I understand that you make the flower on a flower nail....but then it says to let it dry on a flower former.

Is a flower former the same thing as a flower nail?

No- a flower former is like a small plastic cup that you leave flowers (usually gumpaste) to sit in so they dont lose their curved shape and become flat. They also have a tiny hole in the bottom to insert wires into gumpaste fowers. You could see them on Wiltons site.

http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=93495A8B-423B-522D-FD02409E67214873&killnav=1

Instead of using the flowers forms I bought this tool that you can place regular foil into, press it together and it creates a form for the flowers. It comes in different sizes and gives you the option to create a lot of them which is great if you have a ton to do. Let me try and find them online.

I can't find what they are called but here's some pics of them.


You place the foil in between these two pieces and then close them



and here is why I needed so many

such a great tip!!! so helpful to me too!

Here's a tutorial on using the nails to make petunias

Here is a ''list of links'' for flower making originally searched out
and posted by 'Rylan'.

Aleli -

I was so excited to see all of those links but most of them don't work

you can also sub clean egg carts for the flower former. HTH

Yes, they are not working and I even forgot to paste mine..lol
I had to edited..Here is again anyways

you can also sub clean egg carts for the flower former. HTH

you can also sub clean egg carts for the flower former. HTH

Well that's a real bummer!!! All I did was copy and save the links to my PC.
And copied & pasted them to this forum.

Great information!

Here's another question though---if I make the flower out of royal icing, as the instructions suggest---how would I transfer it to the flower former? Wouldn't I squish it?

I have these flower scissors though, that claim to transfer flowers. Would that work?

I have never used royal icing---but it sounds like the best choice for my cake. I don't want to use gumpaste because the cake is for a group of elderly people, and I'll be dropping the cake off early and then heading out. I won't be there to explain not to eat the flowers. At least the royal icing might soften a bit so it won't be completely inedible. Thought about fondant, but my fondant work hasn't been great. This is the first cake I'm doing that isn't for forgivable family members (who tend to just appreciate the thought), so I want it to at least have a chance...

Ginbug you use small squares of wax paper. Then you'd let the royal icing flower dry hard and pull it off the wax paper.

Do you put wax paper on the flower nail, and then transfer it to a flower former, or just make the flower in the former, and skip the flower nail?

I'm just confused, since the sunflower directions (as well as some other flowers I looked at) say to use flower nail #7, and then let dry on flower formers. It seems to indicate some sort of transfer, but maybe there's something I'm not understanding...

This is probably really easy, and once I understand, I'll feel silly...

check out this website:
http://www.wilton.com/technique/Sunflower

If you click on the words flower nail No. 7 and flower former set in the list of tools, you'll see what they are.
Basically you pipe onto a piece of waxed paper on the flower nail, then transfer your flower on the waxed paper to the flower former (or egg carton if you prefer) so it can dry and it will have a curved shape.
HTH

Awesome---thanks!

Check out the link on my signature. It should direct you to the flower thread and the links should work.