This February I had the supreme pleasure of making my lovely friend Paul's 40th Birthday Cake!!
His wife (for all intents and purposes) got in touch a few weeks before hand and asked if I might like to replicate Paul's 'Motley Crue' leather jacket..."of course" I said, "I'd be thrilled!"
So I popped over for a cuppa, chit-chat-catch-up and to pick up said jacket while Paul was out, none the wiser... I knew this was gonna be a challenge but I think my legs went a little bit wobbly when I saw it in the flesh.
Here it is in all it's circa '94 glory...
An airbrush masterpiece created by Paul's friend Martin in 1994, it's a mighty complicated picture, I had what could be described as an epiphany when I realised that the bottom right hand corner is in fact the characters knuckles but I would still struggle to tell you exactly what's going on in the scene!!
This is the part where I regret not taking more photos of my progress but it was a pretty hardcore hand painting slog lasting approximately 15 hours over 2 stints with plenty of company from friends to keep me sane so it was more a case of just wanting to get it finished on time. As it was, I ended up having only half an hour to doll myself up, find my purse and get me and the cake to the restaurant... there's nothing quite like taking it right up to the wire eh?!!
Just in case you're wondering...
...I started by making a simple stencil of a few of the main shapes within the picture, I laid it over the icing and painted faintly through leaving a random assortment of lines but even though they made no sense they made it simpler to make sure the main parts of the picture were to scale and in the right place.
Then I coloured it in...
I used rough stencils for the wording too, just to give me a hand getting them perfect...
And here he is, finished and ready to jump in the taxi with me...
This is the Birthday Boy modelling his cakey leathers...
And this is its yummy chocolate and Nutella innards...
HAPPY 40th PAUL!!! :) xx
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