Last week you had a hint at these cute cupcake toppers sitting on top of my new DIY cake plate! Today I want to share with you how they came about.
A few weeks ago I was introduced to Craftsy. It is an online video classroom with great tutorials covering a variety of topics. The video that I decided to try was a free mini-course called The Hand-Painted Cake.
As you can probably guess from my blog, I like to paint on most anything so why not a cake! As I started watching the tutorial, I was really excited to find out that I already had the supplies needed to paint on fondant. The teacher, Erin Schaefgen, uses Wilton gel icing colors, together with White, to create the paint needed to work on the fondant.
Once I chose the color gels I wanted, I added them to a foam plate with a toothpick. I then added a couple drops of White to each and mixed them up forming my color palette.
Since I was trying this technique for the first time, I decided to work on small rounds of fondant instead of a whole cake like in the video. I am sure I will be trying that at some point, so stayed tuned! I used white Wilton fondant, rolled out thin, and cut out with a cookie cutter. Per Erin’s instructions, I did this the day before and put them in the refrigerator to harden up. This way the fondant cupcake toppers would be easier to paint on and handle.
This was more of a practice run so I kept my designs simple. I used new brushes that I had on hand and will keep them for painting just on fondant. The video has some great recommendations for brushes that I will look for in the future. To thin down the gel paints, I used a 50/50 mix of water and vodka in a cup. You don’t need a lot…just enough to thin the paints a bit. I kept a separate container of plain water for rinsing the brushes between colors. Hint: I found that the gel colors dried way better when thinned with the water/vodka mixture. I tried some designs with just the gel color and they never dried completely.
I made the cupcakes from a box mix and dyed canned icing with green Wilton gel. I then piped on icing leaves using a Wilton leaf tip and placed my painted fondant cupcake toppers on the leaves.
This was a totally fun experiment and I will definitely be trying a bigger project the next time. There are a ton of different cake decorating videos on Craftsy and the next time I try one out, I will share the experience with you!
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I link up at these great parties!