Preparing for "Canada Blooms" Garden Show

 

Our group, Canadian Society of Sugar Artistry (CSSA) will have a booth at the garden show "Canada Blooms" in the middle of March.  One of the exhibits will be a six tier cake decorated in sugar flowers all handmade by members.  Verdie and I are working on the peony tier.  Lisa (Flour Confections in Pickering) is our team leader.  This past Sunday we worked in Lisa's amazing shop and produced these spectacular peonies. 

Here's Lisa covering up the foam "buds" with gumpaste petals.  This takes three small petals first to cover the Styrofoam, then three and then five petals of the next size. 

This is the bud with eleven petals.  Add a calyx and this would be a bud.  Most of them will need another ten to 15 petals to complete the flower.

 

Kathi and Stefani are making the larger two sizes of petals on wires.  They are drying in a plastic former that has a hole for the wire to go through.  A better system than the apple trays I was using!

The petals have been tooled and shaped and are drying.





These are peony leaves, tooled to thin their edges.  They are drying on the foam to give them a more natural look.

These are the cutters we used for the leaves and petals

The next two photos are of Lisa's shop.  It's well stocked with great cutters and cake decorating toys.  All the tools we used to make the peonies she sells.  Here's a link to her website Flour Confections



Verdie is adding the larger petals on wires to the buds.



The inside of an open peony is filled with stamens.  Lisa is holding the inside of one peony.



An open peony finished.



It was a lot of fun and those flowers are really lovely.  Can't wait to see the cake.  But that won't be until the middle of March and I'll post some more photos then.