Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
Hello janeync
It really depends on how realistic you would like your seaweed to be. I’ve had a quick look online and there appear to be lots of tutorials on how to make seaweed. Search in google images to see some of them. More tutorials can be found in google search and in youtube. Alternatively, if you have any shoreline books, look at close up photographs for shapes, colour and any other special features like spots. Use them as inspiration to create something a little more realistic. The seaweed itself is very easy to make, it’s just cutting out ribbons of gumpaste or wafer paper and gently curling into the desired shape. Wafer or rice paper, after colouring, has to be gently steamed to set the colour and to make it curl. Some seaweeds are like large curly leaves. The bladders are pea size pieces of gumpaste rolled into tear drop shapes and attached to the ribbons/leaves at certain intervals. They could also be made with gelatine bubbles. Not all have bladders but it would make your project more interesting to include a variety. For realistic colouirng, take a look at the techniques used by Robert Haynes in his Japanese Maple leaf tutorial. Robert has mixed different colours together to make the realistic colour of the leaves and then steamed and treated them to give the beautiful finish. The tutorial is here:
Hope this helps a little. Good luck with your project!
