Gum Paste Hibiscus Flower Tutorial

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.

Gum paste cut using a hibiscus petal cutter

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.

Cut gum paste in the shape of a hibiscus petal

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.

Using a ball tool to shape a gum paste petal

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.

Pressing a blue veiner on a gum paste petal

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.

A wire inserted petal on a flower former

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.

Holding wired gum paste hibiscus petals together

This was how the flower looked like after taping.

Gum paste hibiscus petals tied together with floral tape

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.

White gum paste calyx and a calyx cutter

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.

The calyx of a gum paste hibiscus dusted in green

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).