This was my second attempt at making gum paste hibiscus flowers and I must say, I was quite happy with the way the flower turned out.
I bought the hibiscus petal cutter quite a while back but never tried making one until recently when I designed a Hawaiian birthday cake. And now, I made the gum paste hibiscus for a tropical beach wedding cake.
How to Make Gum Paste Hibiscus Flower
Main supplies for gum paste hibiscus flower:
- Gumpaste – I used Satin Ice gum paste in white.
- Hibiscus petal cutter
- Sepal/Calyx cutter – I did not have one for hibiscus flower so used a rose calyx cutter instead.
- Petal viener – Again, I did not have a specific veiner for the hibiscus petals. Instead, I used my hydrangea petal veiner.
- Floral wire – I used 22 gauge wire for each petal as well as the pistil.
- Artificial floral sigma and stamen – I used 2 types of stamen, gold-colored ones for the sigma and beige ones for the flower stamen.
- Green petal dust – I used Rose Leaf petal dust for the sepal.
- Floral tape – I used green floral tape to tape all the petals and the pistil in place and a bit of white tape for the pistil.
- Fondant glue
And this was how I made the flowers:
Making the petals
- I used a hibiscus petal cutter to cut the petals. Unlike other flowers, I rolled the gum paste rather thick.
- And then, using my small rolling pin, I rolled the the sides of the petal thin.
- And then, I used my petal cutter to re cut the petals.
- By now, the rounded large end of the petal is thin but the long narrow end remains thick. The thickness is necessary as the petals need to be wired individually.
- Next is to frill the petals. For this I used a ball tool. I started with the center. I thinned the center in a circular motion.
- Followed by the sides until thin and slightly frilly.
- For the veining of the petal, I used my hydrangea petal veiner. It was large enough for my gum paste hibiscus petals and so was perfect to create the veins.
- And when imprinting the veins, I only pressed the wider end of the petals and made sure the narrow end is not flattened.
- This was how the gum paste hibiscus petal looked like after veining.
- Next was wiring the petals. I used gauge 22 wire, applied some fondant glue to it and inserted about 1.5cm of it into the narrow end of the petal as shown.
- And then, using my small rolling pin, I thinned the sides of the of the petal where the wire was inserted.14
- I then left the petals to set and dry in a flower former until they are completely dry.
Making the pistil
- Once the petals were done, I did the center of the gum paste hibiscus. The center is known as pistil and the upper part of the pistil has sigma and stamen. For the pistil, I used gauge 22 wire, and for the stamen and sigma, I used 2 different types of artificial stamen.
- The ones shown below formed the sigma.
- I grouped them together and attached them to the wire using a white floral tape.
- Next, I rolled a thin strip of gum paste, applied fondant glue to the wire, placed it right in the center of the strip and rolled it up.
- I rolled the pistil until the gum paste was smooth and the pistil thin.
- For the stamen, I used flat, beige colored artificial stamens. I cut them the stamens short into individual pieces as shown.
- And then, I dipped each stamen lightly into fondant glue and poked them into the top part of the pistil to form as stamens.
- Once done, I left all the components of the flower to set and dry completely before assembling them into a flower.
Assembling the flower
- To assemble the gum paste hibiscus flower, I arranged the petals around the pistil and secured them in place with green floral tape.
- This was how the flower looked like after taping.
Making the calyx
- The next process was attaching the sepal for the flower. For this, I used a rose calyx cutter. I rolled a piece of white gum paste thin, cut out the sepal, and made a small cut on one side of it.
- I then attached it to the flower with some fondant glue.
- And then, I rolled another piece of gum paste and cut out the following shape.
- I attached it to the gum paste hibiscus to complete the hibiscus sepal.
- And this was how the flower looked like upon its sepal being completed.
- The final step in making this flower was dusting the sepal. Since I wanted to make white hibiscus, I did not dust the petals. Had I wanted a different color for the petals, I would have dusted them before attaching the sepal.
- For the sepal, I used rose-leaf green petal dust.
- In dusting the sepal, I was careful not to spill the color over on the petals.
And that was it for making a gum paste hibiscus. Here was how the flower looked like on my tropical beach wedding cake (Click here to see how I made the rest of the cake).
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please leave your thoughts in the comments box below.
Happy decorating 🙂
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