Autumn is my favourite season. I love the fact it’s still a little warm, with that cold chill and fresh smell against your nose reminding you that winter is coming. It’s just stunning! You can see how I came to design this cake; by looking around at the falling leaves, colours and the seasonal flowers.

This cake was originally designed for the Wedding Show at Bluewater, but I thought it would be a nice idea to make a smaller version for a cake decoration course. The variation of flowers are perfect for showing all of the different basic techniques in making sugar wired flowers.

The flowers we made included: Peonies (open and closed), large Roses, Freesias, Hypericum Berries, Arum Lily’s and Foliage. After learning how to make these you, can apply the methods to most other flowers.

Sometimes if I want to make a flower that I haven’t made before, I will examine or take apart a real one, looking carefully at which method I could apply in order to re-create it in sugar

Furthermore, choosing this Autumnal theme for my class allowed me to demonstrate the importance of planning your colours, learning how to mix paste colours and working with dusting colours. There are several techniques when applying dusting colours that will really help create a professional finish to your flowers.

This course ran for 10 weeks, once a week for 2 hours in the evening. It was so much fun. Students that wanted to learn one of the flowers rather than all of them joined us on a week by week basis. Which was lovely as each week we would meet new people.

When dusting dark colours onto light colours, use a little cornflower and brush away all the excess before applying it to your flower. Start every stroke from the tip of the petal or flower and then brush down. Both of these techniques will help to avoid blotchy marks, helping you blend and fade your colours.

I was so sad when this course ended as we had all got to know each other really well. Ah well I guess I’ll have to run another one then ☺

If you would like to learn how to make ‘Sugar Wired Flowers and Foliage’ please take a peak at some of my classes coming up!