The Mishaps of Flower Making

I have a very long list of flowers I would love to make and I hope to get to them all one day and will make a great effort. I look on line for flowers I like and then save them to remind me. 

Getting Ready to make the Dahlia

I came across a Purple Dahlia that I just had to make and put it at the top of my list. It might have been the wonderful purple color (you can see in the photo) or maybe I thought I could make it quickly being it was just one cutter in different sizes and not a lot of shaping needed to be done to the petals. Or it could been both. 

So this where the mishap begins. Sometimes when I look at a flower I forget to notice how the petals are layered or how they come together to make the whole flower. With gumpaste once you make the petal and it dries you can't reshape it.  But, they don't always come out as I expect.  I sometimes shape them wrong, or I forgot to curve it so all the petals fit nicely.. Things do happen and for these petals I didn't shape them right.

Just a few of the petals

I made lots and lots of petals that didn't fit together too nicely.. But, I figured it out and worked with it.. I started to assemble it and  it ended up looking pretty good. But, when I was almost done wiring the flower, it just slipped from my hand and fell only about 8 inches onto the apple crate. A good many of the petals broke. They were very fragile being so thin. 

The Broken Dahlia

Well, I have long ago learned not to fret, just make more petals and move on.. So, that is what I did. Since many of the petals didn't fit together I just made almost all new petals.. The best part is the second one came out better than the first one.. 

The finished 2nd gumpaste Dahlia