hi i was wondering if there is a certain place to buy the nontoxic artist chalk or can it be bought at places like walmart?
So if you were to look at chalk and the antiacid medicine, Tums, and compare them, you would find that both are made out of calcium carbonate, CaCO3. The difference is that chalk has extra fillers in it that are not intended for human consumtion. This makes me soooo sad because if you could use chalk safely on cakes...that would make our jobs as cakers so much easier and wayyy less expensive. =[
However, if you ground up Tums and found a way to color them...that wouldn't be so bad. But you would have to be careful because you can overdose on calcium. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to paint your whole cake with dry dust. You would have to delute it and use it as a paint and only in sections of your cake (not to cover entire tiers, for example).
I wish I'd seen this post during Christmas... I scrimped and saved, then spent 60 dollars on petal dust just for playing around with and practice making gumpaste flowers. AMG if I had only known! Ahhhh my precious money. I haven't even opened the petal dust I bought yet. Darnit!
Must revive this thread so someone, somewhere, will save money and I can pretend it was me. 
I love this idea!! Thank u so much for sharing!! What a great way for me to spend some of my Michael's gift certificate!
Oh Wow! I knew about the chalk from some friends who worked with cold porcelain items. (flowers & figures) didn't think of using it on cakes tho.
Gonna have to contact them to get the source where we bought the chalk sets. Its been awhile but it was non toxic and cheap!
Thank you for sharing.
I, too, have been using non toxic chalks as petal dusts for quite some time. However, when I went to Michael's I could only find the professional quality ones on the artist aisle and they were WAY expensive. So, I went to Blick Art Supply store and they have a much better selection of dry pastels that are much cheaper. As for pearl dusts, I use a product called Jacquard Pearl-Ex Pigments. They are MUCH less expensive than actual pearl dusts and you get more in each container. Not only that, but because they are made for artists to mix with a liquid medium, they are VERY heavy in pigment concentration, so you don't have to use as much. And, they come in beautiful colors!! Not many pastel colors though. You can also find them on Amazon dot com. And, they ARE listed as non toxic. (Which is important because not all pigments in this category are...) Further, you won't have to use your eyeshadows on your cakes any more!!
By the way, I mix both my chalk dusts AND my Pearl-EX dusts with either lemon extract or vodka and they both paint BEAUTIFULLY!!!
Oh yeah ... yet another "tool" for me to spend money on ... although I must say that I am much more eager to only spend a few dollars on something than tons. I just ordered a bunch of disco dust off of eBay and it's looks really great ... cannot wait to try it out ...
Just by the way, I am also a scrapbooker. Someone asked about the pearlized or luster dusts. Look in the scrapbook isle, usually the isle with the color stamp pads. Perfect Pearls comes in packages of four different colors (I think there are two, maybe three, different packages). The package says non-toxic ...
Woo hoo, I already own those ...
Pat
I've done this with not as good results as petal dust... gave it a go around a year ago because I heard the same tip, and decided I didn't like it. It's harder to get good color coverage and you have to push a bit harder to make the color stay... making breakage become a more common issue. I was breaking so many delicate flowers that I decided the cost for petal dust WAY was worth it over the time and effort I'd put into all those broken flowers.
And it doesn't paint well when wet... it's gets thick and doesn't go on smoothly or evenly. I tried water, vodka and even piping gel and it was all a bust.
Although I did not try artist chalk pastels... I tried sidewalk chalk. Lol... Maybe I'll retry with the artist chalk and see how that goes.
Ok... so I feel like a total dork... but whoever originally told me this tip just told me chalk and never specified. It never even occurred to me to use artist pastels and I already own them. Instead I bought crayola sidewalk chalk (listed as non-toxic) and only used them on show faux pieces but after a few times using them thought "this tip is total crap..." I had to press to hard to get them to transfer color and that caused so much breakage I gave up on it. Now I know why! Bwahahahahaha!
Acan anybody tell me what the containers the op used are called? a quick look on eBay is returning nothing :(
They are bead or little storage containers. You can find them at Spotlight, Riot or some cheap shops.
Here are some links that could be helpful...
Chalk:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JRKKI8/?tag=cakecentral-20+chalk+non+toxic
Containers:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0036C0RT8/?tag=cakecentral-20
The containers look like they are fixed in, but they aren't... they come out... but it keeps them nice and stored...
Hi,
The best way to make luster dust from any matt color used is to add some pearl dust to the color. I have done this with all of my colors, no need to go and buy special luster dust. That way you will always have matching luster dust to whatever color you are working with. I know this works with the chalk as well as the petal dust you can buy. 
You want the soft artist pastel chalk. The hard chalk will take forever to grind, and Im not sure how smoothly it would dust on, might be too gritty.
And of course you want to make sure it's the soft chalk pastel, not soft oil pastel :)
AJust wanted to add I bought a seT of 24 nontoxic chalk and 8 of the containers for exactly 6.69. That's with the coupon. I bought small numbers just I could see how I liked it. Works wonderfully.
The brand I got is Sargent. I got mine from Hobby Lobby in the paint section. It's a good deal to me. Petal dusts at my cake supply is like 4.99 for one. Especially since I'm only using it on gumpaste which isn't going to be eaten
First and foremost, thank you for your and your husband service to our nation, and thank you for posting how to make petal dust, I live in an area that it is almost impossible to purchase any and I have projects that require the petal dust. If you have any other great saving ideas please post them.
V/r
Nancy
This sounds like a great idea but I thought about using powdered sugar and coloring it with food coloring, letting it harden (or baking it) and then grind it like chalk to use.... I'm not sure if this would work but for the sake of saving some $$$$ I think it may be worth a shot too.... I thought of flour but I'm afraid since it's a grain, that making it damp would cause it to mold.... When I do this, I'll let you guys know how it turns out. I don't see where it would be a problem using the non toxic chalk since most gum paste decor have wires and you wouldn't eat them anyway, but you never know with people. That's why I have a clause in my contract. I make all of my customers aware that such things could be used in decorations of their cakes but there is always some one who tries to defy the information they are given.
AIf you do this version, I'd suggest using organic.
A
Original message sent by jeking
I personally don't do this, but I know cake decorators who use powdered eyeshadow in place of luster dust. They only use it on decoration that are almost never eaten anyway. I did use some on a dummy cake for the flowers and it works just like luster dust/pearl dust. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't just as safe ingesting a miniscule amount of stuff that you put on your eyes, for goodness sakes??
If you do this version, I'd suggest using organic :)
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%
