finally some flowers...wilton class #3

Finally a Wilton class where I am more pleased with what I learned than frustrated with the shenanigans!  There were still a couple little things that irked me (my 52-tip master set doesn't contain three of the tips I need for the basic decorating, etc) but all in all, I was really excited about what we learned in class yesterday.  Although when she said last week that we would be learning flowers this week, these weren't exactly what I had in mind.  But they did come out pretty and I can use some of the techniques to get creative and make some other flowers.  And next week is finally roses!

First we worked on drop flowers, which are WAY simpler than they look.  Basically put a star tip straight down, squeeze, and turn your wrist.  Such a pretty effect for hardly any effort!

Next we worked on rosettes...fairly simple but can be used for a lot of things.

Something I really wanted to learn was leaves.  Again, surprisingly simple with the right tip and technique.  I still need to practice these, but I think I will have the hang of them in no time.

And finally shells...although I didn't learn any new tips that helped me any more than the tips from school (these are the ones I have a lot of trouble with at school because we use them all the time in Cakes class and I am way slower than everyone else and they never come out as nice-looking).  I guess I will just have to keep practicing until they get better.

We got to use all of these techniques to decorate cupcakes and then we also learned two larger flowers, a mum and a pom pom flower.  I don't like the pom pom flower all that much but I think the mum is pretty and again, that technique can be used for so many other things.

Oh, and I guess I did kind of learn a rose already, but the Publix way instead of the Wilton way.  I had a great first two days at work, and I learned way more than I expected!  I thought as an apprentice, I would have to do a lot of cleaning, carrying, watching, and practicing on paper for a while.  Nope, they put me right to work and let me try just about everything we had time for!  The first day, I decorated about 48 key lime pies, 12 mango key lime pies, and 6 strawberry kiwi pies.  If you have seen the Publix commercial recently for key lime pies, that's exactly what I was doing!  Except in real life you have to move a lot faster! 

The next day was a little less busy so I got to try a lot of other things.  I did more key lime pies, just because of the sale, but then I also decorated 12 chocolate cream pies and 6 tres leche cakes.  Then I learned how to do balloons, banners, streamers, and confetti, and decorated four cakes with those.  These are the ones that are in the big cooler and people come along and pick one for us to write Happy Birthday on or something.  So that means people might actually pick one of my cakes and buy it!  I find that super exciting. 

And speaking of writing on cakes, the other decorator was on break when a man and his kids came by needing a message written on a cake.  So I went for it, and wrote "Happy 99th Birthday Grandma Mary!" on it.  No pressure with him standing there watching me!  But it actually came out pretty nice. 

I wish I could use my phone at work to take pictures of all the stuff I am learning, but unfortunately you'll just have to use your imagination.  And then at the end of the day I learned how to make the Publix roses.  None of these went on actual cakes because they are a lot harder than I thought and I couldn't get them quite right yet.  They were definitely getting better by about the 20th one but I still need a lot of practice and it was time to go, so hopefully they will get better next week.