Hey all!
I'm working on a shoe and initially set it up with 50:50 fondant + gumpaste but alas! It's not hard enough to hold it's shape (doi! good thing I started super early...) I'm going to redo it and was thinking of just using gumpaste but I want it really REALLY hard and was wondering if anybody has ever put tylose in their gumpaste? (this is for show only, not to be eaten) Would this work or make it too brittle? Thanks for any suggestions!

I personally would use only g/p. Nick Lodge recipe is great. and also Wilton is great. the premade package. They both dry really quickly and both are strong mediums to work with. hth

Definitely try Nick Lodge's recipe with the tylose...it's so much easier to work with than the premade stuff I've tried, and it dries rock hard, even in humid climates.

I make my own gumpaste with the Wilton recipe (powdered sugar, gum tex, glucose and water). Normally it sets up incredible hard, but has a good workability time. Last summer, however, I was having to work in severely high humidity with a failing air conditioner. My gumpaste was taking forever to dry, and many pieces were slumping before they dried completely. I started adding an exta teaspoon of gum tex to the recipe and it worked wonders to dry my pieces and didn't have much of an effect on the workability of the gumpaste. As soon as the weather cooled and the humidity went down I noticed that the 'harder' gumpaste was much harder to work with, so I cut back on the gumtex and it helped a lot.

I would try adding the tylose to a bit of your gumpaste to see how it works.