How To Make A Gumpaste/Sugar Sunflower

Roll out the yellow paste, until it’s about 3ml thick. Make sure it isn’t stuck to your board before you press the sunflower cutter into it. Dust a little cornflour (cornstarch) onto the surface and your fingers if it is a bit too sticky.

Remove the excess paste away from the outside of the cutter. This probably isn’t the conventional way of cutting out the sunflower, but I found it worked better and produced a much cleaner cut.

To ensure that the paste hasn’t stuck to the board, gently move the cutter in circles before you lift it.

Now, use a sturdy brush to go around all the edges ensuring you have a clean cut and remove any extra bits of paste.

Once you have cleaned the cut, press the plunger and drop your shape onto a flower foam pad.

Start shaping the petals with a ball tool. Apply a gentle pressure as you pull the ball tool from the top of the petal towards the centre of the flower.

This next part allowed me to use my new petal veining tool and I absolutely loved the effect it gave! Place your flower on the corner of a foam mat and gently roll the tool back and forth over each petal. You will see veins appear and also curve the petal too. I put the flower at the edge of the mat so the ends of the veining tool is raised slightly, stopping it from cutting into the paste.

Once the petals are veined, place the shape in a flower former. Position the petals as you like, I pressed the edges down.

Pinch the ends of each petal into a point and then leave for a few hours to set.

When the first layer is dry, repeat all the process again to make a second layer and then place this layer on top of the first. I used a tiny amount of vodka in the middle to help it stick. You can arrange the petals to lay in between the first layer before creating the pointed ends. Leave the sunflower overnight to ensure it is fully dried.

Once it’s dried you can add edible orange dust to the bottom part of the petals. Gently go around the petals with a dusting brush. You don’t need too much dust on your brush, it’s so easy to add too much! Less is definitely more!

Once finished, it will look something like this. Starting to look pretty!

Place a small ball of brown modelling paste in a sieve.

With the sieve touching the surface, press the brown paste down with the end of a small rolling pin.

Your paste should now look something like the image above.

Next, use a dresden tool or toothpick to texture the edges.

Keep texturing until you have gone all the way around the disc.

Flip the disc over. If you have a curved end on your rolling pin the disc will look something similar to the image above.

Cover the surface with glue and roll small tubes of brown modelling paste in your hand and then stick them onto your disc. Make sure they are long enough to go up around the side of your disc when it is turned around the right way.

Keep going until you have covered all around the outside. This may seem like it will take ages, but it took me less than 10 minutes!

Flip the disc over and stick it in the middle of your sunflower. If it has trouble reaching the bottom use a small piece of brown modelling paste to help it stick. Shape the strands to how you would like them. I used my dresden tool to do this, but you could just use a toothpick.

Once the middle is dry, you can gently dust it with a mixture of yellow and green edible dust. Be careful not to break the stands.

Lastly, for extra support, I cut out a disc of yellow modelling paste and stuck it to the bottom of the flower. This helps to give the flower strength, so the petals don’t break off.

I rolled out some green modelling paste very thinly and then cut out a leaf shape with my knife.

After placing the leaf on a foam pad, I marked veins onto the leaf using a dresden tool.

I then ruffled the edges of the leaf with a ball tool. You can also use a bone tool to do this too. With one half of the ball on the leaf and the other on the foam pad, gently rub the edge of leaf to thin it and cause it to ruffle. I have a video of me ruffling a leaf in another post, which you can get to here.

After leaving the leaf to dry overnight I dusted it gently with some green dust. I find concentrating on the edges look effective.

Take 20g of yellow modelling paste and form it into an oval shape with a point on one end. Take 10g of black modelling paste and mould it into a small oval. These will be the bee’s body and head.

Press the ends that will fit together on your surface to flatten them.

Stick the two pieces together as can be seen above. Next, using the pointed end of a dresden tool, mark some holes for the antennas.

Your model should now look like the image above.

Take two small pieces of black modelling paste and form them into tubes, tapered at one end. Make sure they fit inside the antenna holes before applying glue and fitting them.

Cut two strips of black modelling paste about 5ml wide. Check that they will fit across the width of your bee’s body.

Glue the stripes onto the bee’s body and trim with a knife.

To make the wings cut out two small hearts in white modelling paste. Leave them to dry hard.

To attach them to the bee, stick a small blob of modelling paste onto the back of each heart and then stick these onto the bee. Leave them to dry before attaching to the cake.