All right, I have made some cakes in fondant and they have turned out pretty good... I have never used gumpaste, and would like to try... sooooo.... when I go to the store to buy it, what is it called, is it gumpaste? I have seen gumpaste powder, do I use that?

Any tips for using gumpaste?

Gumpaste is for flowers and other decorations that need to dry hard. You add the gumpaste powder to fondant, or you make gumpaste from scratch. Then you make fancy flowers with each petal on a separate wire, and tape them into the very natural arrangements that you see in Alan Dunn books (try your local library). Or you make 3D walls or masks or other complicated shapes that need to dry hard. The draped fabric shapes and ribbons on cakes are usuallly gumpaste because it rolls very thin without tearing. It's also called flowerpaste in some books.

You don't cover cakes with gumpaste. You continue to use the fondant that you show in your picture. That's a very nice cake.

OK. I don't know how ambitious you are or what your budget is.

So check out ebay and look for vendor bluelakefox because he sells cutters for a reasonable price. Get a set of small flower cutters and a set of leaf cutters.

You can also look at goldaskitchen.com to see what they sell for lace cutters and molds.

Your local public library might have a book on gumpaste flowers. Search for authors like Alison Proctor, Alan Dunn, Lesley Herbert. They sell their books secondhand on abebooks.com for very reasonable prices. Look at some printed instructions or at wilton.com to see what other small tools you need to get started.

I shop at BulkBarn and their products are good quality. Buy the gum NOT the dry mix, and make it yourself using recipes here on CakeCentral. Let the gumpaste sit at least overnight to make it the right texture.

The reason that I mention budget is that you can very quickly go into hundreds of dollars of stuff. Better to try simple flowers and then invest if you have a lot of fun.

Thanks for the advice!

I do have the Wilton Ultimate Cake Decorators Caddy, I know it comes with some stuff to make flowers, but I am sure like anything you can easily buy lots, and lots, and lots of stuff for it... LOL

You have a lot of the little tools there.

The metal cutters work MUCH better than the plastic flower cutters. Start with those and you will not get frustrated with the crappy edges. You can get a lot for $50 if you look at the bluelakefox listings carefully. Try to steer towards the "small" petal of any type, because it's all too easy to make an elephant sized flower. You learn faster by making the smaller flowers.

Alan Dunn does have some wonderful books on gum paste flowers but I would not start with them at the beginning. Most of them are a little involved and you may become discouraged. There are some wonderful tutorials on line. I love http://www.designmeacake.com/--http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/ http://sugarteachers.blogspot.com.es/
and http://www.lovelytutorials.com/forum/tags.php?tag=gum+paste
Wilton.com also has some pretty easy flowers to start with.

thanks ladies! Now to find an excuse to make a cake with flowers LOL