Gumpaste Feet

Applying the principles I'd learnt making the hands, I did a similar thing with the feet - starting large, to build confidence, and gradually getting smaller:

I found this set of photos on Flickr quite useful, thanks go to MissCakeable! 

Gumpaste Hands

I wasn't very happy with how the hands and feet were looking on the fairy body so, rather than move on to completing it with the head, I decided to do tutorials on hands and feet to get some practice at making something that looks a little more realistic.
I started with hands and began working on quite a large scale, gradually making them smaller and smaller as I became more confident I wasn't going to pull the fingers off as I was elongating them! It actually turned out easier to do the smaller ones than the large ones in the end.

Lorraine McKay's video tutorial on making hands with modelling sugarpaste is very clear and gives invaluable guidance!

Fairies & Toadstools

A friend has asked me to make a toadstool cake for her daughter's birthday. No self-respecting toadstool is complete without a resident fairy, so I started work last night in putting one together. I had the idea that she would be dressed in quite a draped kind of dress, but I wasn't happy with the way things were turning out and decided to abandon her like this:

Tonight I thought I'd try again and give her a petal type dress. I decided to give her a bit of a cape and overall I am much happier with this body. I need some practice on making the hands more delicate, but I was finding it difficult to work on this scale. I'll let it dry over night and then work on the head tomorrow.

Flowerpaste II

The flowerpaste was a great success! It rolls paper-thin with no problems at all and is great for making delicate flowers such as this carnation.

Thanks to Cake by Cath for this great tutorial on making carnations! 

Flowerpaste

I recently made my first ever sugarpaste flowers and was quite surprised when I went to buy the flowerpaste to discover how expensive it is. This led me to search out recipes for DIY flowerpaste. I came across this recipe on Helen Dissell & Gill Pope's site which I have tried out tonight. In place of copha I used pure coconut oil, and in place of Tylose powder I used gum tragacanth. I've left it to rest and will see tomorrow if I can get some decent flowers out of it.