Carefully lift stencil away from the cake. Lightly touch the tip to the cake surface, squeeze, stop pressure and lift straight up. For a swirled flower, give the bag a quarter twist as you squeeze, then lift up. For flower centers, affix a round tip and drop a tiny dot of icing inside the center of the flower. Or do three dots, a tiny circle or a small mound.
Roses are the piece de resistance of cake decorating.
Perfect the rose, and your cakes will look like Monet's garden. As for lilies, well, they're for the graduate student. Using a No. 12 round tip, build a small mound of icing in the center of the nail. It should look like a Hershey's kiss. Begin applying petals to the rose.