I recently needed to make red blossoms for a wedding cake. I used gumpaste because I didn't want them to "wilt". I colored it two days in advance to set the color. I spent several hours preparing the 72 blossoms. After a couple of hours, the blossoms faded. They turned from red to a brick or clay color. They looked awful! However, the gumpaste that was not used still looked red! Since I only had one more day before I had to work on the cake, I stayed up all night making flowers out of fondant with tylose and prayed for the best. I used the same coloring (americolor red red). I stayed away from wilton coloring just because I didn't want the color to fade. (I have read many topics about the dye problems in red) So, can anyone shed any light on what happened? I used Wilton premade gumpaste with americolor. The new flowers never faded even though I didn't have time to let the color "set". I'll have a pic up soon. I forgot to take a pic of the yucky flowers. I was so upset that I dumped them all because I needed my trays for the new flowers. Any thoughts???

Ack! You shouldn't have dumped them! Gum paste will dry a lot lighter, but what you can do is paint over them with red food color and extract or vodka to get the deeper color you want. I had to do that to match the brim of the purple baseball hat to the cake I made and also to deepen a navy background for my Dallas Mavericks cake logo (in my photos). I would also think petal dusts might work too...but I love the color I can get with the gel and lemon extract (or vodka).

I like your hat! Okay, my DH tried painting the flowers but it looked streaky. How did you keep it from streaking? I tried petal dust and it was real light. UGH! I must be doing it wrong. Practice will make it happen I guess! Thanks for the advice! I'll keep working at it!

I agree with carmijok, gumpaste does tend to dry lighter in color.

Sorry this happened. I had the same problem too the first time I used gum paste. Thankfully it was a surprise cake for my mom for mother's day, so the color didn't have to be perfect and I was able to tint my icing to match later. I just assumed it would dry darker like fondant. Now I always go darker than what I want (just like I go a little lighter with fondant) and it comes out great!

Did you have your flowers near a window?

Direct sunlight can fade gumpaste flowers.

I had this happen with purple fondant/gumtex flower left by a sunny window...they faded to a pinkish color.