Search This Blog

Saturday, November 30, 2013

May the Force Be With You, Again; Part Three : Airbrush Stencil Lettering and the Completed Cake


     For the Star Wars cake I knew I wanted the inscription to look like the movie logo, but wasn't sure how to pull it off, and really, really didn't want to cut each letter out of gumpaste or MC by hand. I went on-line and sure enough, found a Star Wars font generator here. I typed in my message, saved the picture, then loaded into a photo program , turned it into the size I needed and printed it out. I printed out to copies, which I will explain later (the extra copy can be any size, no need to waste expensive ink.

     I used a glue-stick to attach it to a piece of cardboard and cut it out with an x-acto knife. A pain in the ass to be sure, but still less of one than cutting out the letters themselves.

 Make sure to extend your cuts past the corners so the cardboard pieces come out neatly:

 I rolled out a piece of gumpaste and set my stencil on top:
 First sirbrushed it with yellow, trying to keep the airbrush as perpendicular to the piece as possible without spilling to avoid spraying color under the stencil edges:
 I went over it two more times with orange and red for shading:
 Lift stencil off carefully:
 Here you can see my extra copy I mentioned earlier. I kept it so I would know where to paint inside the letters since I couldn't cut out the negative pieces. Believe me, if you try to rely just on your memory you are bound to mess up, at least I would. After the colored airbrush dried I went over it with a paintbrush and black color. This took forever to dry, so I let it dry curved over a cake dummy with the same circumference as my cake was going to be so it would crack if I tried to put a flat logo on a rounded cake.

A lot of work for the words, but I loved the end result. Of course, if I had an edible ink printer I would have printed that sucker out in a heartbeat- I am not (that) crazy!

 And the finished cake. All the figures are rice cereal treat cores (except Chewie and C3PO who both have MC cores) , covered in MC, and painted with dusts and or airbrushed. The Death Star was just a piece of black foam board airbrushed with white and black food color,






May the Force Be With You, Again; Part Two, Making a Galaxy Cake Board

     Like many others I have been guilty of leaving an unfinished , silver cake board. Now, I don't think that is always bad, but unless you're Mike McCarey , your cakes will probably only be improved by decorating your board as well.

     For the Star Wars cake I wanted my board and cake to match and look like a galaxy far, far, away.
First I colored my fondant a deep blue and covered the board. Then I randomly airbrushed with deep blue and black:



 Then I remembered gradeschool art class and grabbed myself a (New) toothbrush. I poured a little white airbrush color onto the brush and flicked it onto the board:

 I then went back in with white in the airbrush to make little galaxy-ish shapes




 I colored the cake itself the same way (actually I did the cake first, which is why it doesn't look quite as nice as the board in my opinion as I was still getting a feel for it)

May the Force Be With You, Again; Part One : making Jabba and Chewie

   


Some of you may remember my first Star Wars cake a few years ago, with a Chewbacca bust in a party hat and Scottcheroos in the shape of a carbonized Han Solo, if not you can find it here. I am not a total Star Wars fanatic, but I do love the characters, so was excitied to get a request for another Star Wars cake, with absolutely free reign as to the design !!!!!!!! My first step was a little doodle:

     I love making figures, and one of the advantages of a figure-heavy cake as opposed to sculpted, is that much of the work can be done ahead of time (although if you are like me you will end up doing it at the last minute anyway - damn you Netflix!).

     Before I begin on the figures I get my base board (for this I used 1/2" foam core), protected with aluminum foil, and some cake pans so I know how big I can make the figures and have them still fit.

 My first step is always kneading all the colors of modeling chocolate I will need :

      If possible I try and keep figures edible when I can, Jabba is a perfect example of this because , being a blob, doesn't need any internal supports. I smooshed together a Jabba shape with rice cereal treats to start with, forming it on the board

     After I have the rough shape I want, I start filling in the gaps with lumps of modeling chocolate:
 Then I start covering the entire thing with a thin layer of the modeling chocolate, color isn't important as this is just to smooth everything out for following layers:

 Smooth everything as much as possible:
 Starting to give a general idea of the features:
 Adding more modeling chocolate

 adding gumpaste eyes
 Now I roll out thin layers of the colored modeling chocolate and start applying them (I use a teeny tiny bit of water brushed on the back to apply)

 texturing with gumpaste/clay tools as I go along

 Jabba before his paint job
 And after, with the rest of the figures
 My hands down favorite of the bunch was Chewie though

For Chewie I started with a block of modeling chocolate instead of rice cereal treats , and toothpicks in the legs. I covered with more MC and textured with my gumpaste/clay tools