Our gumpaste floral wreath cake tutorial this week captures the lush floral and foliage trend perfectly featuring hints of gold, lots of greenery, blush florals and of course a touch of marble too. Plus, it’s a super simple to re-create as well.
We used a 6″ gold ring for the wreath with is the perfect size for this four-tier wedding cake (which has 6″, 8″, 10″ and 12″ tiers).
These gold rings can be bought on Amazon but you can of course make your own if you prefer a more rustic looking wreath: take number of strong wires – white, green or wrapped in brown florists’ tape – twist them around each other. Then fashion them into a circle and secure the two ends together with tape.
Or for a wooden effect, pick up an embroidery ring at your local craft store which will make a very pretty framework for your floral wreath also.
Gumpaste Floral Wreath Cake Tutorial: Materials
- 6″ gold ring
- dark green floral tape
- 1 large wired rose and 3 wired rosebuds (in our gumpaste rose tutorial we use a very strong central wire but if you are making roses to attach to a wreath such as this, keep your main wire thinner e.g. 16 or 18 gauge, so you can wrap the wire easily around the gold ring)
- 2 stems of medium sized leaves (with 3 leaves on each stem), one longer stem of 6 smaller sized leaves, plus one or two single leaves
- foam pad to rest the wreath against as you’re working on it
- 18-gauge wire
- wire cutters
Gumpaste Floral Wreath Cake Tutorial: Method
We start by making an “anchor” which will secure your floral wreath to your cake when finished. Take a strong gauge wire (e.g. 18 gauge) and wrap it around the gold ring a few times.
Next twist the two ends around each other.
If you feel the anchor wire still isn’t strong enough you can add in another stronger wire at this stage.
Tape the additional strong wire to the anchor wire with floral tape.
You can leave it at just one anchor point if you wish. We will be adding another lighter anchor “pin” at the top of the floral wreath when we’re attaching it to the cake as well. But if you like, you can add another wired anchor at about the 3 O’ clock mark also.
To assemble the wreath, we start with the outer components first – the leaves. Take the top set of leaves and tape in position with floral tape.
Move to the bottom of the wreath and tape the outermost leaves in place in here also. (You will need to bend your wire to arrange the leaves in place as shown.)
Staying at the bottom of the wreath, move inwards a little and tape your next set of leaves in place – the long stem of small leaves.
As you can see from the picture above, there is an exposed gap between the two stems of greenery where the floral tape is showing which needs to be covered. We can use a single stemmed leave to cover this spot.
As you move closer to the center of your arrangement, it’s easier to tape the components in place if you first twist the wire around the gold circle and then tape them in place
Once we have our leaves attached, then it’s time to move onto the flowers. Start with the large focal flower first. Attach this to the wreath by twisting its wired stem around the wreath, then taping it in place. Attach the top rosebud next, then the rosebud at the bottom of the large rose, before attaching the bottom rosebud last.
The wreath may be attached to your cake as is, but if you’d like to add a monogram to the center of the wreath now is the time to do so.
Firstly rest the wreath against the cake in the position you think it looks best. Then with a scribing needle or tool, mark where you’d like the center of the monogram to be. You might think it should be dead center but with the roses encroaching into the inside of the circle, a monogram looks best placed slightly to the left of center in this case.
For a tutorial on how to create a monogram on your cake, check out Faye Cahill’s monogram cake tutorial right here.
When it comes to attaching the wreath to your cake, your base anchor will need to be inserted into a plastic straw or flower pic or dipped in Edible Safety Seal or melted chocolate, before inserting it into your cake (depending on the food safety laws where you live).
Then to secure the top of the wreath against the cake, we use a quarter piece of 18-gauge wire bent in half like below and use it to pin the top of the wreath against the cake, just under one of the top leaves. Again the ends of the wire need to be dipped in Edible Safety Seal or chocolate first if the top tier is real cake.
And the finished product will look like this……voilà!
