Who else spends too much time handmaking birthday gifts?? (Patreon)

Luke's birthday was yesterday, so I pushed back Monday's update to tomorrow night, under the condition that I show you guys everything I made for him. ;)

First of all, THE CAKE! He requested a Slug Cat cake because he's playing Rain World right now and is totally hooked, despite it being mercilessly hard.

This is the mockup I did in Procreate, a lil drawing of Slug Cat using a spear (Pocky) to defend himself against a Daddy Long Legs, superimposed over a photo of the sheet cake I sloppily iced in yellow, green, and teal: 

I LOVE mixing food coloring into icing! It's surprisingly similar to gouache.

Mixing a black is tricky, though. I tried a few combinations in white icing, but ultimately had to buy dark chocolate icing and mix blue, green, and a bit of red  into it to get... well, whatever this color is.

(Photographed next to the teal I used on the cake, so you can see that it's actually darker than it looks in these photos.)

The nerve-wracking thing about drawing on a cake is that if you screw up, there's not really an undo option. So I sketched out Slug Cat with a toothpick and used a decorating bag to pipe white icing into the outline, and then added the Pocky spear.

(As you can see, I'm re-reading The Neverending Story. Also pictured: amazing needlepoint cat face coasters.)

I smoothed out the white icing with a butter knife and piped the lil hands over the spear. Then I piped in the monster's legs/birthday greeting to Luke, which was much easier because it's just messy words and squiggly lines.

In order to get the blue glowy blue spots to pop, I needed to pipe a light blue icing in first (as you can see on the left) and then add the store-bought translucent blue gel icing on top (right).

Et voila! Pretty damn close to the original drawing! He loved it.

After I popped the cake into my fridge to hide it from him, Luke dropped by and mentioned that he wanted to make a glitter bomb card to prank his friend. How convenient that he brought this up an hour and a half before we were supposed to meet up for dinner, right when I was about to start his birthday card.

So I looked up glitter bomb instructions, and made a card featuring Slug Cat holding a Grapple Worm, which shoots out a sticky taffy-like grapple arm in the game.

Then I made a cheap little pouch out of the weakest tissue paper I had on hand and filled it with glitter:

... glued one side to the inside of the card, signed the card, glued the other side, and smooshed the card shut.

I knew he'd figure out what was up because the card maybe had a LITTLE TOO MUCH GLITTER to close it flat:

... but that was okay, because it was a learning opportunity for his future glitter bomb card prank. Also he opened it over my kitchen floor, so.

(I was about to share a photo of the glitter pile on my kitchen floor, but you can barely make out the glitter amongst all the grass clippings and cat hair I hadn't cleaned up yet, so, I'll spare you.)

Aside from the cake, the thing I spent the most time on was an element of the gift wrapping for one of his gifts: two vintage Zelda Gameboy Color games that he'd never played before. I decided to draw the background from the old-school NES Zelda game all over a sheet of green paper... 

... which took FORFUCKING EVER, and then I wrapped it around a block of styrofoam and completely obscured my efforts with the cartridges.

Ah well, it's some nice ambiance.

I also got him a gong. Yeah, like, a real gong. He wanted something alarming yet soothing to bring his students to attention in the art room this year. I think it'll be a hit with the kids.

Not pictured: the incredibly involved Malaysian dish Luke made for his birthday. (I often reap the benefits of his birthday desires.) It's called Nasi Lemak. Anyone ever had it?

The last two pages of Elephant Town Chapter 12 will go up sometime tomorrow! Thanks for your patience. And wish Luke a happy birthday if you see him. :)

Oh, PS, I attached a video of the cake mockup, in case you're interested! (I originally wanted a peachy-pink element to the background but decided that is TOO MANY COLORS to mix and I don't have enough bowls to mix them in.)