Sunday, July 8, 2012

How about Painting on your Cakes...

Fed up of fiddling with flowerpaste or wrestling with piping bags? The solution...painting your designs directly onto your iced cake!
I recently attended my first class at Pretty Witty Cakes in East Sussex, it was a cake painting class taught by Natasha Collins. You may well have visited her blog Amelie's House and seen her amazing work. She's very talented and paints the most amazing cakes. She also runs Nevie-Pie Cakes where you can buy one of her works of art.

It was a really interesting day as I haven't really painted on cakes much, although I did give it a go a few weeks ago with my Russian Doll Cakes. However, the Russian dolls were more a case of filling in blocks of colour and didn't really require much artistic talent.
On the day of the class Natasha took us through step by step, showing us how to create our flowery cakes. We mainly concentrated on painting dog roses and daisies. To make up the 'paint' is quite simple, it's just boiled water and paste colouring, we used sugarflair colours which are really the best available. Previously when I've mixed up colours I've used alcohol dipping solution which also works well.

The secret to creating effective designs is to add depth by using lighter and darker shades. The good news is, you can also erase mistakes by adding water to the area with your brush.

We started the day by painting some cupcake toppers, which were little circles of paste dried overnight leaving them ready to paint on the next day. These were for practise before we moved onto our big dummy cake. The first thing was to mark out the rough area where our flowers would go in order to make sure they were properly spaced.

To start with painting can be a little frustrating and we were all rather critical of our work but when you step back and look at the finished article as a whole it really does look effective. I didn't quite master the depth of colour but it wasn't a bad start.

Natasha uses a variety of sources for her inspiration, however one of which was a book called The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady which you can on amazon for £2.49 or you can buy it used for 1p plus postage! I may well order a copy so I can get practising my painting skills.

As I mentioned this was my first time at Pretty Witty Cakes, the classes are run by Suzi and they're hosted in her home in the 'Pretty Witty Workshop'. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming and there's even a little shop...I can never resist a few sneaky purchases! I think in the future I'd definitely consider another of the Pretty Witty courses...there are plenty to choose from.
I learnt a lot on the day and will find an opportunity in the future to use my new found skills. I would say that it obviously does help if you're artistic, which I'm not particularly, but either way you'll come away with a cake to be proud of!

20 comments:

  1. You have such a talent with cake decorating and this must have ben lots of fun to do. I am very into art and painting so maybe this is the kind of cake decorating which I have a chance to be good at!

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh my - what a stunning technique. I love your flowers - how can you say you're not artistic?

    ReplyDelete
  3. so pretty! :) i've nominated you for an award http://messmakesfood.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/super-sunday-update.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stunning :) you should win that award

    ReplyDelete
  5. The cake is beautiful! I'd love to learn how to paint on cakes someday. Thanks for the tip! : )

    ReplyDelete
  6. Laura - if you are artistic you should definitely have a go you'd be great!

    Caked Crusader - I'm really not overly artistic when it comes to drawing and painting...it was good tuition - you should have seen some of the other students...amazing!

    Miss Messy...thanks so much for the award. Liv thanks too!

    ReplyDelete
  7. How absolutely stunning! Such a pretty cake! I think my lack of artistic skill and unsteady hand would cause major problems ... I'd just have stick men all over my cakes! My Nana used to own the Diary- I'd love reading it as a child!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow! I saw cake painting at Cake International and was fascinated. I'm so clumsy I don't think I'd manage something as delicate as this. The classes sound great though - will have to look into that :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow! Painting a cake is so new to me and I think this looks great! Lucky you to be able to take these classes!

    ReplyDelete
  10. you are an artist!! This looks like a masterpiece!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Your cake and painting are both so impressive. Beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  12. What a gorgeous cake! Our birthday cakes were always painted when we were little (my mum is an artist so we always had awesome cakes!) and I find it much easier than fiddling with fondant too. Plus you can achieve so much detail with painting.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I really like this idea. You flowers look great, Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  14. That's beautiful! I once painted a scene from 'Farthing Wood Friends' onto a cake for my son's birthday (long time ago), but I haven't done anything like that for years. Thanks for the reminder :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. This is amazing, gonna to have to learn how to do this!

    bakingabook.blogspot.com xx

    ReplyDelete
  16. Love Nevie too, so many pretty things . Very therapeutic too. Must be good classes as she seems to get the best out of everyone! Thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  17. It's beautiful! You must be really pleased with it. I have been tempted to do this course for a while now. Might have to bite the bullet.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Wow! This is such a gorgeous cake. You're so talented Laura & it always amazed me! Keep up the fantastic job! :)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Beautiful! It looks like a woven fabric or glass. This cake class is a good start to learn pastry baking skills.

    ReplyDelete

Your comments are greatly appreciated!