Icing flowers for the left-handed decorator

History: When I was a child, I would pick up a crayon, or pencil, or whatever, in each hand and write with it. Finally, my sister (13 months my junior) pointed out that, "You're only supposed to write with one hand." Since the rest of my family is right-handed, I chose my right hand, but used my left hand for a lot of things, dealing cards comes to mind. Years later, a neurologist told me I'm actually left-handed.

Time passed, and I started taking cake decorating lessons. Then came "the rose". Yikes! The rest of the class turns their flower nails the "right" way - counterclockwise. I turn mine the "wrong" way - clockwise. I still moved my hand toward me. My roses looked like - well, you can imagine - a pile of icing, certainly not a rose. So, I practiced and practiced, and practiced some more, and figured out the key - the direction you turn the nail, the direction you move your hand, and the direction you tilt the tip all have to agree. Once I figured this out, my roses started to look like roses.

Then I became a cake decorating instructor. Oh, now I have a left-handed student. Let's see if the old left-handed tendencies are still strong enough to make a rose. How about that? I CAN DO IT! HOORAY! YIPPEE! Well, my first left-handed student decided to make her roses "right-handed", which was fine with me. Then I posted on a discussion forum that I can help "lefties" with their flowers. A request finally came in, hence the Buttercream Flower Video.

The video comes in 2 flavors, "pc" and "mac". It shows how to make a rose and how to start a daffodil, an apple blossom, and a pansy. I left out the final details for the last three flowers, since the direction you turn the nail doesn't matter. If you need higher-resolution video, please let me know. The "standard" quality video is nearly 700 MBytes, far larger than the allowed video size. The "pc" version is on the left, the "mac" version on the right.

I hope this video helps.