Happy B-day, DK

Heya,

So, this is a special birthday themed post since the last thing I finished was this birthday card for my buddy Derek. He turns 40 today and there was a big party for him saturday where he was given pretty much the most exciting present I've ever seen, a sword made by the BARON, paid for using contributions from all of his friends and family. The thing is beautiful and was a surprisingly huge (chest high on derek who is 6 ft something or other) two handed ordeal. It has "No Gods No Masters" engraved in the blade and the Amebix face thingy set in a metal coin in the base of the hilt. Presented with much pomp and circumstance and then carelessly waved and passed around in a crowded low ceiling-ed room full of dogs and babies.

My friend (and his wife) Kristi who put the party together wanted a birthday card that mentioned "40" and featured a sword and (surprisingly hahah) couldn't find something like that so she asked me to make one. My mind went from "sword" to heraldry so I made a little crest themed painting for a jumbo sized card:
The wolf heads were particularly fun to paint:

The sword in the painting is based on the actual sword (but proportionately much smaller). I unnecessarily did a lot of reading on heraldry while working on this and the practice of "blazoning" which is just a formal protocol for describing all the visual elements in a crest. Pretty neat.

My roomate Alexis who is THE sickest cook and baker I know and I teamed up to make Derek a cake as well. I actually really like decorating cakes for friend's birthdays but can't be bothered when it comes to the actual baking part (which is probably why the battle axe cake I made for Mike last summer looked like "an iced fart"), so Alexis and I make a great team (she pretty much knows everything about this stuff!). We decided on a Discharge themed cake, and made all these little spikes out of fondant then painted them with silver dusting powder mixed with vodka to make an edible paint. I also cut the lettering out of rolled fondant. It was a vegan almond and vanilla double layer cake with raspberry between the layers. It ended up being one of three awesome cakes Derek got haha.
It's been pretty great lately having time to work on art projects for friends instead of working on a show. Right now I'm working on designing another shirt for my friend Carol's store but it probably wont be finished until I get back from my trip to Ireland and England (leaving this thursday!).

I probably wont be posting again until I get back so I'll leave you with this: