Hello dear readers, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. A death in the family, a severe attack of shingles, and then a total knee replacement had all sucked my writing mojo, but now that I’m recovering, I want to share some projects from my back files with you.
Last November I was invited to a wedding, and was honoured when the bride asked me to do the wedding cake for her. She gave me free range with the design, but expressed an interest in paper flowers, and showed me a snippet of the dress fabric, which had gold thread and beading on it.
I had never made crepe paper flowers before, but was keen to give it a go. As the wedding was to be outdoors at Huka Lodge, which has a glorious bush setting, I wanted a design that was elegant, but a little informal. At the time of the wedding, I had clematis montana climbing all over my back deck. Its pretty white flowers and gently twining tendrils inspired me to try and recreate them in crepe paper.
The stamens were made by cutting a strip of yellow paper (approx. 10cm long and 2cm wide) and fringe cutting along the length of the strip. Then I twisted each little fringe strip; it really helped to lick my finger before each twist. Then I rolled the the whole strip, and attached it to a piece of floral wire with green florist tape. I made a petal template by gently remove some petals from an actual flower, traced around these, and used that as a guide to cutting petal shapes from white crepe paper. The paper is easy to mould into a cupped shape by gently stroking it with your fingers. I used a dab of white glue (PVA) to hold the petals in place, then used more floral tape to secure them in place, and continued the tape down the wire to create a calyx and stem. I used the same template method to make the leaves, and by concertinaing the paper, I could cut a lot in one go. These flowers require a lot of patience, but are not difficult.
The little gold and pearl button decorations were made well ahead of time by piping royal icing onto non-stick paper, allowing them to dry, then storing them in an airtight container until needed. Using a Wilton no.2 piping nozzle, I piped a central dot, then five more dots around the centre. A gold dragee was popped on the centre dot, then sugar pearls around that. Do let me know if this inspires you to have a try at paper flowers or a cake project.
Cheers, Karen
Hi Karen,
I made many paper flowers way back in the early 70′s when my children were only small. I did a coarse with a very talented teacher here in Melbourne. I was asked to do several wedding bouquets as my roses, were so close to natural, I even surprise myself how realistic they looked when I recently found some photo’s of them.
We used to unroll the crepe paper and roll two different colours together, then carefully dip them into water and let them dry, this way the colours would run together and once the paper was dry you would get some very interesting and realistic colours. We used single paper to recreate the flowers, then spray them with a special spray, the name escapes me at the moment. Even though I have moved around a lot, I still have some of the prepared papers in the craft room I think, but it has been a very long time since I did them, I am sure I would need a great deal of practice to get them perfect again.
Well done trying something new, the cake looks great, and you have inspired me to perhaps get some paper out of the craft room and have a go.
I did a fuchsia hanging basket one time and had someone come in to water my plants when we were away, he watered my hanging basket and couldn’t work out why it had a hollow sound when he poured the water into the pot.
When next in Wellington I should come and have a play with you, it would be fun to do it again.
Jenny Pickering
Hi Jenny,those roses sound amazing. If you come across any of your old pieces, I’d love to see a picture of them. Cheers Karen
This is so beautiful Karen. The stamens look so fresh and real you’d think they were about to drop pollen on the cake!
Hi there Jessy! So cool to hear from you.Yeah, I was pretty pleased for my first effort at these, and they looked really white and crisp on the cake.The bride and groom seemed happy with it, and every scrap of cake was eaten. Cheers, Karen
Youve done it again Karen — sometime you should do pictures of some of the amazing iced cakes you have done – like the nude bathers, the fish, etc. That would be a best seller – and the one with all the shells and things. Great work. NAB
Awwh, Granny you’re too kind.Although, maybe I could unearth some pics of some of those cakes. Cheers Karen