4 Tips for Sugar Flower Arranging
- Direction. How can you make all of your flowers face different directions but all look like they’re growing out of the same area on the cake?
- Depth. All of the flowers should be at slightly different depths from the cake so that they don’t look like they’re sitting on a flat plane. This allows the flowers to look more natural and organic like in nature.
- Height. Similar to depth, when sugar flower arranging they should all sit at slightly different heights yet follow your initial shape idea.
- Colour. How can you contrast colours between your flowers to make the arrangement pop? Look at your arrangement shape as a whole and each colour within it separately as adding to the overall flow.
Tools & Equipment for Sugar Flower Arranging:
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Transcript: Sugar Flower Arranging
Cake Sketching Process
Sketching Main/Face Flowers
00:47 First, I’ll show you my sketching process. So I’m beginning here just by sketching out a six inch cake. And it’s much easier if you have one of those [cake] templates or you can print these off online, but I just drew this quickly.
01:02 I always start with the main flowers first. So that would be the daffodils in this case. We want all of the flowers here to go in a gentle S formation. I’ll simply start by sketching in a daffodil at the top facing where the S shape ends.
I want the direction of the first one to be going off to the right and upwards. Initially I will choose a shape like this S shape or something similar with lots of movement before I even get started.
I always want to know which direction my sugar flower arrangement is going to go. That way I’m not faced with a paralysis, just looking at the cake, not knowing where to start. If you haven’t made all of these flowers yet, you can find all the tutorials above in the Tools & Equipment section.
01:53 I next want to continue with the S shape, but I want my flowers facing in different directions so that there is a lot of movement. For this main part I really want all of the flowers to look like they are growing out of that S shape. They should also have different directions that they’re facing in and different heights, which is really important and also different depths. They shouldn’t all be sitting on one flat plane.
Those are three really important things to keep in mind when you’re making your sugar flower arrangements. I drew three different arrows here to show you the three different directions that our face flowers are going to be facing. And this is very important in order to create that movement and the depth that we want, but they are all kind of growing out of that initial S shape that we drew in the beginning.
Sketching Filler Flowers
02:41 Next let’s work with the cherry blossoms. I’m going to start filling out the area between the daffodils, and we want that to still continue in that general S shape, but it doesn’t have to be exactly following the same shape. It just has to broadly connect the two. So that it doesn’t look too structured, but you can get the idea that all of the flowers are moving in that direction.
That is one huge mistake that I can see when people are just starting out with sugar flowers. They always have the flowers, either facing the same direction or just following a very like structured defined area. Instead of having them more naturally growing out of the cake. I’m drawing a few more cherry blossoms here to accentuate that left daffodil. So again, we don’t have to follow the S shape exactly. Lastly, for the cherry blossoms, I want to balance out our main arrangement.
03:35 So I’m going to have just a little branch coming around the cake, just kind of reaching around and that should do it. Next let’s add our, forget me nots. And these, I like to add in any gaps or little spaces between the flowers that feel kind of sparse or bare. These are great to add tiny pops of blue color and a bit of extra movement too. So hopefully you can see now that general S shape that we had along with the balancing area at the bottom, where we added that cherry blossom branch.
Safely Adding Sugar Flowers to your Cake
Now that we have our design sketched out, it is time to add them onto our cake. I’m using a fake cake here, but I want to show you how to safely place your flowers into a real cake. I use black cocktail straws. The wire is moving around too much in there.
04:25 So what I’m going to do is bend the base of it into a wide hook. Then I’m going to see if that fits into the straw.
We want it to be really snug so that it’s not going anywhere. The hook was a bit too wide so I will smash it down just a tiny bit and then check again. And that fits perfectly, super snug, not going to go anywhere.
So we can trim about a centimeter away from where the wire is. And then you can fill that with some Royal icing, just to make sure it is super secure.
Make sure your cake is not going to be touching the wire. Also make sure to gauge how much wire you want sticking out of the cake so that you know the length of the straw that you need.
Arranging the First 2 Daffodils
We are going to go ahead with this design and start with the daffodils. For the entire design, I’m going to keep that S shape in mind and just think of the placement of every single flower following that shape.
I’ll start with this daffodil, and I’m just kind of gauging if this is going to be the right direction and how high I want it first and then I go ahead and insert it.
05:30 And again, this is a fake cake. So please don’t just go ahead and start inserting wires into your real cakes.
I then use the needle nose pliers to readjust where the face is going, and then I can move on to the second daffodil.
So remember we had this one facing towards the left. They’re all facing in different directions, but all growing out of that same S shape. I’m just going to adjust these a tiny bit so that they are overlapping correctly.
It is super hard to kept longer wires into styrofoam. So if you are doing a fake cake, go ahead and trim your wires a bit it will make your life easier.
Arranging the Cherry Blossoms & 3rd Daffodil
Next let’s move on to this cherry blossom area that is going to be kind of bridging the gap between the daffodils.
06:28 So I have my selection of cherry blossoms that I’ve taped together just like I showed you in the video, and now we want to get the right movement for this sugar flower arrangement. So we want this to be following kind of like an S shape from the top, right.
And then it comes down and a little bit up towards the left. So I’m going to bend the whole arrangement a bit that way before I stick it in. You never want to rush the arranging part. I find that I’m always playing around with flowers and their directions before I ever commit to where it’s going to be going inside the cake.
So I trim that wire a tiny bit. And now I’m just going to insert that into the cake. So I did bend that wire at about a 90 degree angle so that I can have those flowers coming from the top of the cake, as opposed to sticking on the side of the cake, which is going to be a lot more secure.
07:19 Use your needle nose pliers if you need a little help inserting those correctly. Your flowers have probably moved around a little bit as you were inserting them. So just rearrange them and adjust as necessary and make sure that they are all in a direction that you like before moving on.
Next, I will place this bunch of three [cherry blossoms] right at the back. So I want this to be accentuating the left-hand side daffodil. It’s just coming out a little bit, peeking out from behind it. And I’m also trying to fill a bit of the space between these two daffodils.
So it doesn’t look so bare again, playing around with those little blossoms so they’re filling all the spaces that I want them to.
Adding the 3rd Daffodil
Adding the final daffodil now. So you can see that is at the base of the S shape. And I’m inserting that upwards where it would be hidden by one of the cherry blossoms.
So you can’t really see the insertion point. And I just want to adjust those cherry blossoms a tiny bit, so that they’re overlapping a bit more and allowing this daffodil to come a bit closer to the the cake.
Arranging All Remaining Sugar Flowers
Let’s add our, forget me nots now. So as I mentioned, we are going to start filling the gaps and I’m going to try and cover up all the insertion points.
We don’t really want to see that it makes the flowers look kind of leggy and awkward. So we always want to have those insertion points covered as much as possible when making a more classic sugar flower arrangement. So letting those buds kind of poke out a little bit on the right side, just adding to the movement.
Next, let’s add that cherry blossom as our base arrangement. So I always do like to add something to ground the arrangement. Otherwise it feels like it’s kind of just floating up there. And I just like the look of having something a little bit more grounding. So that is why we’re adding the Cherry Blossoms right at the base.
09:47 I also like that it’s going in a slightly different direction than our S shape. So it adds some contrast and it doesn’t look too static.
I’m adding a tiny bunch of those, forget me nots right at the base as well. So you can see that empty space here where you can see all those insertion points.
We definitely want to cover that up. I’m just going to shimmy these in and then grab my needle nose pliers to insert them fully. And then after that, we can play around with all of those to make sure that they’re covering all the spaces that we need them to.
I think the blue and the yellow contrast is really beautiful. I definitely wanted to add one more little bunch of forget me nots next to that daffodil at the base. And I also think that rounds it out really nicely. So here is our finished arrangement.
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