Brutal But Delicious – a Purity Seal(ed) Cake

Mrs G designed the paper part and in time-honoured fashion got to work with a candle and teabag to age it.

The purity seal is only a prop, the real main event is the cake (and the birthday).

The idea of the cake is grimdark battlefield. To do that took loads of Oreos: three layers of sponge, each containing 100g of crushed Oreos.

The frosting, which is meant to sort of be like a muddy battlefield is vanilla frosting mixed with almost 200g of crushed Oreos, with some finely crushed Oreo bits around the Space Marine.

In total five packs of oreos!

So the lad had a great party, and that’s the main thing. A fun little project, with the real work from cake genius Mrs G.

After the primer had dried (and I’d finished work for the day) I took to highlighting. This took two approaches: proper painting on the skull design and just spoldging on some red on the outer wax squish. I tackled the latter first.

At this point it was getting late. I sent the above pic to Mrs G as proof I’d been cracking on. sending that to another made me look at it critically. It’s ok, just with a bit too much shading on the temples etc.

So I decided my tasks were just to finish off were to put a glaze over the upper areas to tone down the shading, then back outside for several coats of lacquer.  Ooh shiny!

It’s delivered to the north, and awaiting its appearance on the birthday cake. It’s not perfect (I’m mostly kicking myself over the sloppy brush priming) but it ain’t bad. I had fun and the important thing is the lad has fun at his shindig.

I hear there are lovely things like filler-primers but I don’t have any of those. I do have Polyfilla though, so I did a bit of that.

I’d have liked to spray prime this piece but the clock was ticking and the rain was coming down hard. Rushed and sloppy brush prime it is, then. I regret this haste.

A mercifully drier next day meant I could get the rattle cans out. The first coat a brunt umber graffiti paint, the second some Dragon Red from Army Painter. I’ve never done much with rattle cans other than priming, but it was fun to try vary up the shades, trying to concentrate the brighter red to the outside and the skull design.

The finish is far from perfect. The lack of time saw to that – but it’s also driving me to actually get on with things.

My partner’s lad is about to turn 12. To her absolute horror he’s got into 40k, so his birthday party will have a grimdark feel. She’s a true cake genius but wanted a couple of props to finish off. I’d painted a Primaris marine for it and had grandiose plans to sculpt a purity seal.

The project did not begin well.

They say “fail early, fail often” and I certainly did here. I took to eBay and picked up a 3d printed purity seal, thinking I’d have chance to get it done in time.

The photo above follows a bit of sanding. I had pictures of both stages but they were near-identical. There seemed little point showing both.