Breaking out of my comfort zone! Fondant Poppies...

As the title suggests, this past weekend I had an order where I needed to make flowers...something I had not yet done without them being a simple cut and press type.

I needed to make poppies!
So as any self taught decorator would i started looking on Pinterest at Poppies others had made and on Youtube for video tutorials that would help me with this task.

As I only had whatever was in my cutter store to use for the flowers, it was finding the right tutorial and working out the best way to approach it.
I did however buy the poppy leaf cutters, as the leaf cutters I currently owned were not suitable and i wasn't going to do them all by hand!

One of the main images I found was to the Poppy/Rose cutters on the Pretty Witty Cakes website. I also found a great video for a simple tutorial on Youtube that uses this cutter (posted at the end of this Blog). This gave me a place to start...

I had my Red flower paste, all my tools, Doctor Who on the TV and I was ready to begin...

I cut out the flower shape and them using a ball tool I thinned and stretched the petals to the shape I wanted them.

As I didn't have a veiner to add texture to the petals I used the Shell modelling tool to created the lines in the petals.

I also added a circle of black fondant to the middle of each flower, indenting the top as it would be on a real flower.

these were then placed onto my foam mat and shaped, where they would then be left overnight to dry.
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However they just didn't feel complete...something was missing...

...Poppies are not just a simple dot of black in the middle! Time to crack out the airbrush...

Much better! It is amazing how just something so simple can completely change how something looks. I was much happier with them like this so, i carried on making the rest that would be needed.

The finished cake was a poppy covered birdcage for an 18th birthday, though it seemed kind of fitting to be making a poppy cake for Remembrance Sunday also.