Make Your Peonies Pop! Learn to Color Sugar Flowers

The Nicholas Lodge-instructed online class, Classic Sugar Flowers walks you through each and every step of crafting a wide variety of flowers such as peonies, tulips, and anemones. But here in this free video tip, he demonstrates his fast, and effective method for creating realistic color and shine for his sugar flowers—from stem to petal. Watch how he handles the flat brush, and see how he achieves a lifelike shine with steam. This is only a taste of what you’ll learn about crafting flowers from gum paste, but any cake decorator should check it out! Then be sure to head on over and register for Classic Sugar Flowers so you can learn so much more from Nicholas!

Hi, I’m Nicholas Lodge, an instructor on Bluprint. Today, my tip is to show you how to color sugar flowers.

Here, I’m going to use some pink dusting flowers. When we color a flower, you want nice color on the edge. A flat brush is the best way to go. I’m going to hold the brush flat, and I’m going to brush from the source, away from the source. So outside to inside. And then I will use the brush on its side, to be able to actually sort of brush into it to create those stripes. So on a flower like a tulip or a peony, this is the perfect way to get the color in. Finishing this off, we’ll put a little green. So we will then brush the green. Again, we’re coming from the source, away from the source. So coming from the bottom to the top of the petal. We’ll create this nice effect on this tulip. And that’s how you make a beautiful tulip.

The final stage is the icing on the cake. And that’s that you use a steamer. A steamer will help to give the flower a nice natural look. So we’re going to use a steamer here, and I’m going to just gently steam the flower, and this will actually give the flower a nice natural look. When you’re using dark colors, this enables you to get rid of that dry, chalky look. So when the steam comes out, we will just, as I said, steam this a little. And this is what I use for most of my flowers. Notice, you have a nice soft pink here. But this, of course, could be used. This is the same color used on the yellow tulips. You can see the difference in how it will look on the different color. So then we’re just going to gently put this in front of the steam, and this is going to then just gently steam the flower, and this will give it its nice, natural look. And there you have a beautiful, dusted sugar flower.

If you enjoyed this tip, look for my class on Bluprint.com, Classic Sugar Flowers.