Pieces

The cake's done and halfway eaten (the Mayan Chocolate layer was a little too moist, almost like an English pudding) and the equipment's going in the bin til next semester.  The next class is taught by a little old lady who hates butter and uses Crisco in everything.  Should be interesting.

If I'd had my druthers, I would have not had any gumpaste flowers on the cake - I think it clashed.  But it was a requirement of the final, so I made lotus flowers, which Tiffany mistakenly called "pond lilies". 

 First, I colored some gumpaste with a little rose pink, bent some floral wire, and made buds, which I stuck to the gumpaste wire.  Gumpaste shrinks a little as it dries, so the bent wire kept the bud on the stem.

Using a tulip cutter, I cut the lotus shapes out of rolled gumpaste, then trimmed the petal ends to tips by hand with scissors. 

My messy setup at school.  Once the petal is trimmed and shaped, I'd put it on a cell pad and shape it with a round clay shaping tool, putting more pressure on the ends to get that "petal" look.  The petals would double in size after being shaped.  I'd then wet the petals with just a little water (sometimes I put rose or lavender essence in the water to make the flowers smell flowery; I didn't this time) and stick them onto the bud.  Usually, I did this three times, waiting until one flower was dry before adding the additional petals.  I bent a few petals as well, for a more natural look. 

Finally, using a little petal dust, I hand-brushed the tips of the flowers for just a blush of color.  I'm very pleased with the way they turned out in the end. 

Back in my fabulousdisneybabe.com days, I put up, like everyone else did back then, what was then considered to be hi-res photos of Disneyland for people to use as desktop backgrounds.  One reader wrote in to compliment me on them, but, she complained, her boss would only let her use generic pretty backgrounds; he considered Disneyland too childish for the office.  Co-workers were allowed to use personal photos (not of Disneyland) of pets and things, so she considered this a little unfair.  I came up with a solution: Flowers of Disneyland background pictures.  Do you remember these?

 Even with the trash can visible in that one, she totally got away with it.  There were about 40 different ones.  The quality of the photography isn't so great; I never took a class, just point and shoot and hope.  But it got the job done.

I am still sick, sipping lo-han tea and taking it easy today, frustrated because there are a million things I need to do.  Well, I have a little time before school starts again in January.  There's the rest of the Christmas shopping including Noe, the thank you notes, finishing the lavender cake for Mom L., laundry, housework, packing up the class stuff, and writing a book about theme park history.  I think I'll lie down now.

Fab