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y'all uh we're going to be talking about borders today so i'm going to get this up here so some
basic ones like your shell your rope reverse shell simple things like a star or a rosette and even
things like a bead and a dot so i have a couple of different sheets that i'm going to work on
and i want to talk about these because a nice clean shell border is a thing of beauty but they
can be easy to kind of mess up and have them look a little wonky right so you're always trying
to get that kind of nice curved overlook look not flopped over where it's kind of just
expanding out and rolling over on itself so we're going to talk about how to do that first and
hopefully you all will enjoy so i'm going to set this aside right and i'll keep there up
at the top and i have some little sheets that i've prepared i'm just going to hold
this up so hopefully everyone can see but when you're making it right if this
is the surface that we're piping on we're going to hold our bag so it's kind of at
a 45 degree angle in relation to the surface so not straight up and down you want the frosting to
be able to flow out of the tip in this direction right and when we start we're going to hold it so
the tip is just lightly touching that surface and as we start to squeeze we're going to lift it up
so only a little bit about quarter to half an inch as you do this you're still squeezing so what's
going to happen is it'll force the frosting out and make it curl over on itself so when we start
to see that curl happening and we have this nice balloon rounded shape then we're going to take it
and pull it down at an angle towards the surface and that's going to give us that nice tapered
shell that gives us that nice appearance right so now i'm going to put this down and make
sure my frosting is coming out of my bag awesome and we're going to give this a try so you
notice i'm holding the bag in my hand right the bag is at a nice 45 degree angle in relation
to the surface and i'm going to start with it touching right that way the frosting connects
lift out still squeezing you can see it rolls over and once it's done that i'm going to
pull it back down towards the surface right while i'm still squeezing and that's going
to give us that nice tapered teardrop shape and you can see the frosting really rolls
over on itself but it's not like a line that's folded over on itself i think
that's the classic mistake sometimes people get to when they do these i'll try
and do one even though it's a little hard you get used to doing them properly and it's hard
to do them in properly so sometimes people lift up too much right and then you get messy little
shells i'm going to try and manipulate that see then you get more of like a folded over line
instead of it kind of expanding and blossoming out like that and giving you that nice tapered
teardrop shape right so the second important thing is you're going to do these in a nice little
line and you're going to use them to trim the bottom edge maybe put them on the top of your
cake if it's a rectangle it's nice to do them easy and straight if you're on a curve you will have to
kind of follow the curve but it's easier to work on a tray at first so when you do your next
one you want to start far enough back right so you want to leave just a little space in
between your tail and where you start your next one so that it overlaps onto the one before
but doesn't right cover up all of that tapered loveliness at the back right so if you start
them too close together they end up not having the shape and the variety that you want right
you can't really see that tapered pull anymore so you always want to start a little behind
the one before so that you can actually see the full teardrop shape of your shells right
and once you get a hang of actually piping them the trick oh sorry try not to jiggle the phone
is to get them even and i think this goes with any border but it's developing a rhythm
to your piping so i literally count in my head which is harder to do when i'm talking to
you all but if i'm doing it on an actual cake i develop a little rhythm a little beat like
i'm doing a one where i'm squeezing and a two where i'm pulling so it's one two one two right
and that rhythm helps us time our piping which means we're squeezing out the same amount of
frosting and you'll get a much more even effect for your shells right so if you find like you've
mastered actually piping them but they're coming out variable sizes some are bigger some are
smaller work on developing a little rhythm and make up whatever little silly song makes
sense to you and kind of works with the timing but if you can get it then you'll get nice
even looking shells right every single time and you won't have to worry about the size as
well so i'd say the first thing to work on is the actual technique and once you get that
going start working on things like the size and making them really really consistent as you
go around so gently try to put that to the side and building on our shell the next thing to talk
about would be a reverse shell right and that is where we're going to curve the line in various
directions so it's the same kind of technique where you're starting out 45
degree angle touching the surface and as you squeeze and pull up a little
bit you're going to let it start to balloon and then you're going to pull the bag almost as
if you're doing a rosette and curl one way and then you're going to go the opposite direction
so you can think about this as left and right up and down counterclockwise clockwise
it's up to you there's no real right or wrong terminology for this you just have to
go up curl over to one direction and then the next and that gives you a really beautiful
alternating pattern right and you can see the little spiral action going on those shells
and it's really pretty on the side of a cake especially if you're doing something kind of
nautical feeling because it always has the look of kind of like little waves and little seashells
right so that one is a reverse shell so it's a nice kind of like step up from the shell it's
just a little more difficult but not not too crazy so let's see what's next probably star so this
is probably the easiest one that you can do so if you're still working on your shells but
you want something pretty to finish off your cake a star is a nice way to go oh thanks for
the hearts y'all right so for this one we're going to hold the bag straight up and down into
relation to the surface we're piping on right and we're just going to lift it up off the
surface about a quarter of an inch depends on the size of the opening and that way the
frosting will attach the surface and balloon out and once you're finished you stop piping and
pull up right and that gives you a nice fat fluffy star right it's beautiful and perfect
if you're too close to the surface you might notice that it looks like separate streams
of frosting and there's a void in the middle if you're too high up right then the line
will have trouble connecting so i'm going to try and do bad ones right you see hold it too
high up and it tried to make itself a rosette right too close and i damaged it while i'm pulling
it away so those are kind of classic things so i try to take a little bit of a goldilocks
and the three bears approach to things when i'm working on piping techniques right when i do
something like this i remind myself you're too close pull it up a little more when i get stuff
where it's uncontrolled and i can't you know really determine where the frosting is going so
too high up so as you're going and you're piping stars and you're practicing remind yourself too
close too far away from the surface and you'll start to get more consistent consistent
results right so if you want to then the easiest way to make a border is just to line
your stars up and if you're nice and consistent and you're counting in your head you'll get nice
even size stars that are really beautiful right very similar in size similar in height thickness
right and that's a beautiful way to finish a cake and really what it comes down to is if you're
clean and that presentation they all look neat they all look the same even a simple thing like
a star border can be really really beautiful let's see so next thing to talk about
would probably be rosettes so if you feel like your stars are going
really well a great way to expand on them is by doing a rosette so rosette
starts with the same star we're up off the surface just a quarter of an inch
we squeeze a little star if we imagine that our star is kind of like the face of a clock i'm gonna
pull mine over to nine o'clock circle around and when i get to six i start to taper off my pressure
so that when i pull away i get a nice fluffy puffy perfect little spiral right oh thank you for
the heart and then it's easy to just go ahead and line them up right is that just a star tip
it's just the same star tip i've been using a 21 tip the whole time so it's one of those
things where you can get a lot of use out of your star tips and the 21 is really good for doing
borders because it's big enough that it'll cover any imperfections at the bottom but not so
big that you're using tons of frosting or it's really heavy and not so small that
you might still see some of your little maybe slightly imperfect edges
at the bottom of your cake right so you mean all of this with just the
same tip yes it's all just the same tip i know you can get so much fun out of one tip
right and you can do this with any star tip i just for finishing the sides of cakes the 21 is
probably my most popular go-to right so those are rosettes and probably key things that happen
sometimes instead of drawing around the outside of that star people will kind of go on top they
end up being too puffy and more like the top of a cupcake like a swirl for a birthday or pulling
the tip back to the center and then you get a little peek in the middle so those are things
to work on with that right i will reload my bag and talk about dots so i'm going to change my tip okay and i just picked a couple of tips that
i kind of know are really common everybody has in most beginning kind of
like sets and stuff like that so they're all easy ways to
finish the bottom of your cake sure right so i'm actually going to take it
off the bag so it'll be really easy so this is my 21 it has lots of different tines right
you can see that it's just a wilton but most of the brands like atiko and the other ones that are
common on the market the 21 is always the same one um it's a nice it's just a nice size it's kind
of comparable in opening size to your 12 which is actually what i'm changing to right now so
the 12 is just a plain opening right so it's just a plain round tip it's a similar size to that
21 just without the little little tines so you you don't get the little ridges right so we're
gonna do just little dots so you can use this to do pearls right think you can change
the tip up do a bunch of different sizes kind of stack them up on the side of your
cake and it's really nice way to finish it right so same thing where we're going straight
up and down with our bag we're going to lift it up off the surface about a quarter to half an
inch sorry it's really about a quarter of an inch let that frosting balloon into place stop right
so i'm not squeezing and then i just gently swirl the tip around and rotate it off to the side
that gives you a beautiful mounted dot right the thing with dots and i even find myself doing
this after all these years is that usually what people end up doing is they squeeze and then they
just pull straight up and you can see what you get then is a tiny little hershey's kiss right so it
takes a little extra time a little extra control but if you swirl that tip around at the end
it'll shave that little peak off for you and you'll get a really really smooth beautiful
presentation and if you string them together you end up with a beautiful border
right oh sorry keep knocking the camera right and if the dots are a little one thing you
can do is an alternate form of the shell with the plain tip but in this case we're going to stack
them really close together right so same thing 45 degree angle right hold the tip against
the surface lift up squeeze and pull right and instead of starting back here behind the
point of the first one i'm going to start right on it so that when i squeeze and pull it nests them
together and gives you a look like a beautiful string of pearls right so by nesting them together
it makes them look connected and they start to look like little beads so it's just a slightly
different way to do a shell border that gives you a nice little variation so if you've been
doing shells and you're kind of sick of them it's an easy way to practice your shells
right but get a nice kind of smoother sleeker look to them oh and this one is fun
so i'm going to change back to my 21 tip and i'm going to talk about a rope border i've actually seen this a lot lately on pinterest
people using the kind of rope border technique in some cases to cover entire cakes and it gives
it a nice twisted braided look and it's something you can build on to actually do kind of complex
piped braids so with this we are going to take it and we're going to start and
we're just going to pipe a line above the surface and then we're going to do a
little tail on it where we're scraping against the surface and then we're going to start
our second line right brought another color underneath the first kind of right up next to
it and we're going to follow the same shape and go like that and then that way we can go back
and continue the first one and go over again so you see it ends up looking like a twisted piece
of rope because we have this kind of continuous undulating under over motion that we're creating
by basically piping two different threads kind of continuously in pieces and i don't
know if that sounded like gobbledygook or if it actually made sense to everybody but
hopefully it'll make more sense when i start piping right so i'm going to start
touching the surface just pull my bag up right and i'm just piping right a nice little
curve right and it's about an inch long and you can see there's a nice little space
now i'm gonna nest the bag right in there so that when i start piping my line will
start there and i'm going to pull it up and over top of this line in the same
motion right so i'm going to start right here follow the same motion pipe over the tail of the
first line and create a tail right and so now when i start my third one i'm going to connect
to this little tail start piping and pull over the tail of the next one and that's going to give
it that kind of braided spiraled rope effect right so start on the tail of my first curve and pipe
over the tail of the second one and then you just keep going right and i would say the thing that
gets people the most is they're afraid to make their tails long enough and if you don't have
that to pipe over you don't get that spiraled puffy twisted effect to it right and you kind of
lose the effect of being a twisted piece of rope all right so just always connect to the
tail of the one before you just did and just keep going right and i've done more elaborate
ones where they're more kind of like twisted celtic knots and all sorts of fun stuff
where you can kind of expound on this and you get your separate streams of frosting going and you
create a nice lovely pattern but this is a good basic rope and it's a good one to practice and it
helps kind of with your spatial skills and some other stuff but also your control and it's really
pretty and it looks lovely on the sides of cakes all right and then i think the last one has two parts and i'm going to use a number
104 tip and we're going to do a ruffle so this is a petal tip that's another plow and if we imagine that this
right here is kind of the cake right we're gonna pipe a ruffle along this edge and make a nice
little border stay on the bottom of our cake board if we're doing something cute and pastel
pink and frilly and we want to take the fat end of this 104 tip and put it so that it's
not just against the surface of the board but also against the edge of the cake right
this might be a little hard to do but i'm going to leave it kind of flat against the surface with
just the skinny end up and as i move along and i'm piping i'm just kind of rocking that skinny end up
and down and it'll make nice ruffled curves right and i'll show you that so you get a nice
little ruffle then at the bottom right it's beautiful sometimes i just do two layers of
ruffles and leave it at that but you can also do a ruffle and shell or bead combo so for
that purpose i pulled out one of my smaller star tips can you show the 104 before you
sure so the 104 tip right so it's just a nice standard pedal tip it comes in most little
beginner kits and sets and also so does the 18 so it's a star tip it has less points and it has
a slightly smaller opening so the other thing that you can do is you can kind of make combination
borders right so then on the back edge you can do a little shell border and this is also something that
people do in combination to my pipe swag so you can make more complicated borders by combining the different techniques with each
other right so that was a nice way to finish you