I want to make some Hibiscus flowers. The cutters are a bit spendy. Id there any other cutter I can use to substitute Also what kind of veiner should I use? Thank for any help you can give me.
Ruth Rickey offers hibiscus cutters and veiners and they are reasonably priced. Her site is Ruth Rickey dot com or you can look her up on facebook.
I have used a rose petal cutter and a poppy veiner . These are what I made. 
I saw one video online where the lady said you can substitute a teardrop cutter and elongate it.
The thing I found strange, as a novice, was the use of wire for the pistil. Is there no edible wire substitute?
As a novice, you'll find all sorts of things that are strange. Even though cake decorators insist on "food safe" and "edible" components on a cake, none of the wired gum paste flowers are designed to be eaten. First....they have wires. Second.....gum paste is NOT tasty.
Some use dry spaghetti as a "wire" substitute, but it has many limitations. Since the premise for gum paste (GP) flowers and decorations is that they are for decoration ONLY and not for eating, wires are used to enhance the overall design.
I made my first GP flowers, hibiscus, for toppers on cakes for a 100th birthday party for a beloved relative. Before serving the cakes, I removed the GP decorations and set them aside. A few days after the party, I put the best of the flowers in a vase in a bouquet arrangement, and gave to the birthday woman to have as a keepsake. (You can also put GP decorations in a clear plastic, or acrylic box to save as a keepsake.)
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I posted a thread with a lot of photos of the preparation process and the final cakes on Wilton.com:
http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=4&threadid=156177&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=
I used the largest cutter in a Plain Tear Drop Cutter Set (similar to this one by Ateco):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VMG1HO/?tag=cakecentral-20
and used the new, inexpensive, Wilton veiner to vein the petals:
http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=B756F5AB-1E0B-C910-EA33735B9D932678&killnav=1
The thing I found strange, as a novice, was the use of wire for the pistil. Is there no edible wire substitute?
As a novice, you'll find all sorts of things that are strange. Even though cake decorators insist on "food safe" and "edible" components on a cake, none of the wired gum paste flowers are designed to be eaten. First....they have wires. Second.....gum paste is NOT tasty.
That makes sense. I'm new to all this and thought that if a flower is on a cake it's meant to be eaten, you learn something new every day. I guess I've been watching too many cooking shows where they tell people not to put anything on the plate that's not meant to be eaten.
SloFlo~~If you look at the 1970's/1980's Wilton yearbooks and cookbooks, etc., you will not find any of the 2000-2012 "extreme" cakes.
The UK and Europe primarily used fruitcakes for weddings which, of course, can sit at room temperature for months. Extraordinarily intricate royal icing work could be done on those cakes (Lambeth Method). One of the original uses of fondant was to keep a cake "fresh" before refrigeration was available. Fondant and marzipan was used interchangeably in many UK and European cakes for a long time.
In the 1970's the Wilton Method gained USA popularity and in the 2000's, the TV started the new rage of extreme cakes with fondant. Since most British, UK, Australian, European kids grew up with fondant or marzipan covered cakes, they like the taste. Most USA people aren't used to "chewy" frosting and don't like it (but they like the way it LOOKS!).
If you google the history of cake decorating, you will be amazed!
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