Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I’m making a wine bottle, how can I get it to look like glass?

Hi Linda

You could brush on a little confectionar’s glaze to get a high glaze effect or if you have gum arabic on hand mix a teaspoon of it with some water in the same way as you would make edible glue with tylose and water. The gum arabic makes a nice glaze. Here is how I make my glaze up:
http://www.cakeflix.com/blog/marzipan-fruits-by-madeitwithlove

Alternatively you can use plain boiled, cooled water, brush the parts of the bottle you want to make shiny and allow to dry. The fondant will remain shiny once the water dries off, you can use a little shimmer to highlight the spot. Try this out on a spare piece of fondant first to see whether you like the effect.

Hope it helps.

Thanks for that. I don’t have tylose but I do have CMC powder- will I get the same effect with that?? I know for most things they can be used in the same way, just want to check….xx

Hi Linda

I think you may have misunderstood me about the gum arabic. What I mean is you mix the gum arabic up in the same way as you would tylose/cmc when making glue and not use glue to make a shine ( it might work!!). I’m so sorry if that wasn’t clear. It’s gum arabic for the glaze, not tylose/cmc.
If you don’t have any of it use the cool boiled water on a damp brush and remove small amounts of the main colour to make shiny light patches. Here and there use small amounts of white colour in very thin streaks so it looks like light playing on the glass. The white streaks stand out against the darker back ground so remember to decide which way you want the light to be coming from. I’m so sorry if this doesn’t make sense, have a read of this article it says it better than I can:
http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_6467983_paint-glass-reflections.html
The article is about painting with artists colours but the technique is the same. I hope it helps xx