Tea Party Cupcake Toppers Tutorial: Part 1, Forks and Spoons

Learn how to make miniature gum paste forks and spoons for tea party cupcake toppers with this easy tutorial.  The tiny gum paste silverware is surprisingly easy to make, and really adds an impressive touch to tea party cupcakes.

I'm helping out a fellow party-gal in a pinch this week.  She's working on a Halloween tea party, and didn't have anyone to make cupcake toppers for her.  This is a little sneak peek of what I made:

People go absolutely nuts over these diminutive tea sets, and I thought it would be fun to do a series of tutorials showing how I make all the elements and put them together (it's way too much for one post).  

None of it is particularly difficult, but it definitely is time consuming.  I'm happy to give these away to friends and family, but I'm not sure I could get anyone to pay me enough to make it worth my time to sell them.  This is one of those things that makes me very happy I'm such a DIY-er, because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to afford to have elements like these at my parties.

The first time I ever made these was for my oldest daughter's 5th birthday (she's now 9!)--an Under the Sea Tea Party theme.  This was well before my blogging days, and clearly my photography has also improved since then.  But I still absolutely LOVE how the cupcakes turned out.

I'm going to start the series of tutorials with the itty bitty gumpaste silverware.  

First, color your gumpaste.  I wanted silver silverware, so I colored a small bit of gumpaste a grey color to make a nice base for the silver.  Roll the gumpaste into a long, extremely thin (think spaghetti) string shape, then use a sharp knife to cut the string into small sections (approximately 1cm long, but you don't have to be too precise).

To make the spoons, all you need to do is take the round end of a small paintbrush (the not-painty end) and push it into the end the small segments of gumpaste string.  Ta-da, instant itty bitty spoons!

Making the small forks is just as easy.  To make the forks, take those same 1cm segments of gumpaste, use your finger to smash one end flat, then use your sharp knife to cut the smashed bit into tines.  Voila, itty bitty forks!

Dust with silver luster dust, or give a light spray with silver or super pearl luster dust spray to give the silverware a metallic shine.  If you're using one of the aerosol spray cans, be sure to put all your gumpaste silverware in a small tupperware container, because the air blast from the luster spray will make all of the lightweight forks and spoons scatter on a flat surface.

Be sure to follow the links below to see all of the different tutorials for making elements of these tea party cupcakes.

Other Tea Party Cupcake Tutorials: