Make my own flower paste/gumpaste or buy ready made white and colour myself?

I have been dabbling with sugar flowers for just over a year now…….ive found using tylose powder with my fondant is working best and its a lot cheaper than buying ready made flower paste.
I bought a large tub of tylose online, it was £7 pound something and I still have half left after a year!
The main thing ive found with sugar flowers is to make sure your buds and pieces are dry properly before you go on to the next step….Ive had a lot of flowers fall off the wires cos ive been impatient. Add about 1 tsp per 500g of fondant, knead well and leave to rest overnight. Youll find with flower making there are a lot of steps over days and days of drying time.
With regards to colouring, I use sugarflair gel paste colours….if it makes the paste too soft just add a little more gum powder. And then youll need all sorts of dusting colours. Dusting the petals makes them look more realistic.
If your gumpaste becomes too dry, you can add a little white shortening. Trex in uk, from supermarkets and crisco in usa and elsewhere.
Ive learnt everything I know from here and you tube tutes are really helpful…….there are tons. Just type in gumpaste……then the flower name…..and theres usually quite a few tutes.
Hope this helps….any thing else dont hesitate to ask ;-)))))

I don’t do a lot of flowers, but I totally agree with Christine.
I use fondant and tylose, and wilton gel colors. I think the secret is the perfect combination of tylose, time and shortening.

I tend to use commercial bought flower paste if I want more realistic, delicate flowers, Platinum paste is superb. For the stylised flowers, which I tend to do a lot of, I add cmc to sugarpaste. As above, dusting flowers is great fun, you can really add subtle detail. I also have a portable steamer to help set the colours and give a bit of sheen (very cheap on eBay).

I also agree what what Christine says about sugar paste but I also use Renshaw flower paste it comes in white and about 8 other colours and is lovely to work with. I’m not a flower specialist but it works for me :)

I have used several different mediums for making sugar flowers and, imo, the best by far is this recipe from Edna at Design Me a Cake. It is easy to make, it works like a dream and it is much cheaper than store bought! I highly recommend it! http://designmeacake.com/Gumpaste_Tutorial.html

Thanks Pamela….. ♡

My pleasure!

I make quite a lot of flowers and I always use Sainsbury’s “White Flower and Modelling Icing” and I always colour it myself. It is very good value at £2.50 for 250g.

I forgot about Sainsbury’s Pamela. I bought a big batch, as it is superb value, and made my wedding cake flowers with it. I was very impressed with the quality. We haven’t got a store nearby, but when I was passing one, I popped in and couldn’t find any on the shelves. Hope they are still making it.

Hi Linda, yes they are still selling it, you were just unlucky. I think that it’s brilliant.