How to make a King Tut Egyptian Sarcophagus cake

My son requested an Egyptian theme for his 6th birthday party and wanted a king tut cake-and no not just the head—the whole sarcophagus. So I printed out a good image as a reference and attempted to craft one. here is my tutorial--

I used one batch of homemade pound cake. ( I would not recommend attempting to make this with a box cake mix or anything too soft) I cooked it in 3 mini loaf pans, one large loaf pan and one small 3” round cake. (I also made one extra mini loaf than I made two small squares with – as when my kids have a really fancy cake they want the candles stuck in some mini cake not in the big one)

I lined them up on my giant turkey platter and cut then to sculpt the general form. Then covered them in buttercream frosting and draped the entire thing in gold marshmellow fondant (mixed brown and yellow wilton colors to tint) I then sculpted the rest of the layers of fondant (hands, head dress, crook, etc.)

I then painted the entire thing with gold pearl dust mixed with clear vanilla extract. Then I used black, cyan,a deep prussian blue,(mixed cyan and black) and a red violet to pipe on all the details with a super fine round tip. I took some liberties to simplify  some of the details- because well it deserves just so many hours of my time and I am not a perfectionist. you can see here the finished project. I made the mini ankh and eye of horus cakes from the scraps as the mini “candle cake”. I used fondant tools and bamboo skewers to achieve fine texture and details. I have to say though he was very pleased with the finished project…

all I can say is if my son ever doubts that I love him I will pull out this picture to remind him- only extreme mother love- can drive me to spend an afternoon crafting a 2 foot long, 3-d sculpted, gold covered, king tut sarcophagus cake.

SVU show

Last Wednesday at 10 pm I loaded up 30 paintings and headed down to Buena Vista, VA for SVU’s education conference. Thursday night I arrived and hung all the paintings before going to a delightful presenters dinner at the Knights. Friday I got to enjoy a wonderful collection of talk s and delicious food and a fabulous performance of man of La Mancha and stayed up late talking to my great friend Liz. Friday brought more delicious food and workshops and socializing. I spoke Saturday afternoon about my paintings. If you want to listen to my talk you can hear it here. All I can say is it was wonderful. I loved meeting so many people there, as well as seeing old friends. I had a wonderful response to the pieces. While most people would come up and ask why no heads, one woman’s first comment was “thank you for not painting the heads because it makes it so it could be me” (I was so excited and said – yes you got it!!), she later told me that seeing them gave her a feeling almost like narnia- she wanted to step inside and relive things gone by. Another man told me how one of piece really began to stand out to him and couldn’t look it without tearing up remembering times with his mother. It was so interesting to hear the reactions and connections of people of many different ages. I can’t believe the feeling of accomplishment and relief I felt finally completing the series and showing them.

really I am almost there

so I am 4 days away from debuting the domestic series at SVU. Tomorrow the 30th and final piece will be done (I can’t wait to finish it—its one of my favorites already)… but here are the others I have done recently

“milk and cookies”

“easy as pie”

“it’s lovely”

“I’ll wash, you dry”

in the final stretch

of the domestic series that is… here is “hanging it on the line” it is 19 of 20 in the domestic series (one left to finish in this group and 4 left to finish in the mothering series) I am cramming to get done before education week at Southern Virginia University, the first weekend in June.  I will be speaking on Saturday. Yep all thirty pieces will be on display (that’s more than 250 sq feet of paintings) ! I know I can’t believe there are that many paintings either??!!! I am excited to see the series wrap up. When I first started I thought I’d do 12-15- HA!

I actually cant wait to see them all in one place. And I highly recommend coming to the conference. be expecting the final pieces shortly!

chucks

last saturday I felt the uncontrollable urge to paint some pop art- hence 24x30” black converse tennis shoes. I think I’ll put them in one of the boys bedrooms

volumes on white

well this is my latest piece- I have had a great time with this series- although my husband watches me do them and says it in no way looks fun. Truth be told these pieces are best appreciated up close. It is mixed media- layers of acrylic, tissue, painted tissue paper. So there is a lot of play with transparency and translucency and every book is different. But there is much of adhesive and cutting tiny strips which is arduous but fun.

Come to think of it I think I forgot to post the other pieces in this series- such is my life... so see them below

volumes on white 48x48”

volumes 30x40”

volumes on shelf 10x20”

small volumes 9x12” on cradled hardboard

in progress

I started a new piece 2 weeks ago, but life has been too crazy to get back around to it...I wanted to do some new looser pieces- so this is 2 sessions of painting so far on this piece. I have enjoyed being more loose than I was on the domestics- which is much more my natural style- maybe life will settle down enough to get it done—sometime…

Cupcake Class

for the past 4 weeks I have been teaching after school enrichment cupcake class. this year we did pretty simple designs given this is 2-5th graders. I am happy to see it wrap up because I have made 500+ cupcakes over the last month! anyway if you are looking to figure out how to make panda cupcakes, octopus cupcakes, monkey cupcakes, lion cupcakes, tiger cupcakes, robot cupcakes, bunny cupcakes, easter basket cupcakes (also cute if you add sugar wafers cut in half to make 4 basket sides- mine got eaten before i got a picture- monster cupcake got eaten as well), butterfly cupcakes, fish cupcakes, frog cupcakes, pig cupcakes, dog cupcakes, and sheep cupcakes- you can see them here-sorry I don’t have time for full tutorials- if you have any questions on what I used to make them  drop me a comment- the icing eyes I get from country kitchen sweetart. I also get my cupcake boxes from brpboxshop- they are great.

bus domestic

I have to say this is one of my favorites so far. Probably because the colors pop beautifully on my new gray family room walls and because it has special significance. People asked how I got the shot. Well it just so happens one of the people I used to visit teach 9 years ago in Virginia drives a school bus (thanks A.P.!) and she gracious agreed to park it in her driveway so I could get the study shot. But what’s even cooler is that this bus is from the county where I used to teach school- (yes that’s cut off in the painting but I know what the bus really says) yes back in the day when I was Miss Whyte 1st grade teacher. I taught at a darling rural school and every afternoon we’d walk our classes out to the bus. All the kids from other classes would say hi and hug you as you they walked by. We’d and wait while they loaded on and then wave goodbye to all the kids as the 4 buses pulled away.

Now I am on the other side waiting with my 3 yr old from the bus to come afternoon to return my 2 boys from school. (although truth be told when its snowy I wave to the bus driver as he drives past and stay in the warm confines of my entryway! )

when you’re home alone on a saturday night

then you might as well paint the city that never sleeps…last night I did this detail from one of my favorite photos I took in New York City 2 years ago. I was there for a conference and we went a day early, took the boys out for Turkish food  at Akdeniz and to the MoMA- it was one of those days that just hangs perfectly in your memory. It absolutely beautiful as the sun was starting to set and all the lights were coming on. I’ve never painted a city scene so it was kind of fun little project.

here is the photo that inspired it..

winter break

winter break…oxymoron I known, there is no break in winter in New England. We have plenty of winter, and the word “break” for me is generally problematic-- given my hyper-productivity tendencies. Still with a week off school, we decided on a last minute whim to got to Virginia for the week. I got some painting done (another one 2/3rds done), we got to go to the really good library, the picasso exhibit at the VMFA, spend time with family, eat ukrops donuts, and walk around with no coats on (thrilling in itself). Sadly while we were there one of my parents chickens died, Rhonda Warbler, (they have 3- this one was the one my oldest son had named) so he went and picked our a new chicken, nighthawk, a black araucana and is excited for it lay blue/green eggs. We  also got to stop in and see my paintings at the fulfill the vision show in Washington, DC.

now showing L. Graff

In case you are in the DC area, The Fulfill the Vision juried art exhibition is running at the Washington DC Temple Visitors' Center through Sunday, March 27. It has about 100 pieces in it form about 80 artists. Three of which are mine… (any many thanks to my fabulous friend rose datoc dall for her delivery service).

you know your mom is an artist when

your house is filled with stacks of paintings like this… YES this weekend was the annual art shuffle in which I move everything around. My 3 year old goring to a little bossa nova amid the moving mayhem.

olive trees

You know my art changes like the seasons. I start new series, generally give it a good run and move on to something else. in fact it is that freedom to explore styles, instead of feeling confined that keeps it fresh.  Sometimes I go back and revisit the series later, but its never the same I have been different things in between, experienced different things. You may remember a few years back I did some olive trees, reminiscent of my summer in Jerusalem, well my recent trip to Jordan made me want to get back to the series.  So here are some recent pieces…you can see the influence of some other series in this piece…

allegory 30x40” and lone 18 x 24”

label challenged

In keeping up with current social media I feel the need to be on LinkedIn…trouble is I can’t define myself enough to finish my profile. Our society likes you to be one thing. well you are allowed to be 2 things sometimes like a coffee shop barista/struggling actress, or a hip hop artist/reality TV star

But child life specialist/former college faculty/former elem school teacher/artist not so much. See the problem is the connections those spheres are generally very different. And also choosing one seems to delegitimize the other. So how to prioritize?

If I say artist, my educational career feels shot through the heart and dumped in the toilet, if I say child life specialist my art feels like some mere housewife hobby conjuring Bob Ross happy trees images

1. Which do more people know me as… child life specialist based on patient census contact. Now If you go for internet hits artist will win.

2. Which earns more money- hourly… art—ironic huh-- let this be a lesson to all your parents who attempt to encourage your children to be responsible and dissuade them children from pursuing art careers.

3. Which have I invested more in… well given the cost of graduate school (okay I had a scholarship- so I have probably spent more on paints now)

4. Which am I better at…umm I don’t know? you decide…

It has be thinking deeper about our outdated linear, hierarchical, single track view of career paths, a topic I will save for discussing later.

so I guess I am destined to be LinkedIn’s Sybil?? given I read a disturbing article the other day in Scientific American Mind on the links between artists and schizophrenia—-

sometimes to amuse myself I make things out of cake…

yah I do this on occasion. I can’t do it everyday or it gets tiresome but when the mood strikes, kitschy edible sculpture projects have bizarre appeal. My cousin dean and his girlfriend jenny created the very cool short film Marcel the Shell which (by now I expect you have seen if you are internet savvy). Marcel made it into the Sundance film festival this year. 

So in honor of the accomplishment I made this for our Christmas dinner party. I crafted this marcel the shell cake out of cake and fondant. Poor smart son #3 developed this deep attachment to the cake and kept asking for marcel the rest of vacation and expecting me to make more of them…

well in case you ever need to know how to make marcel the shell in 3d cake form. You start with almond pound cake cooked in small loaf pans for the shoes, a 6” round (cut in half and remaining half used to build out the 3-d form of the shell, and some mini cupcakes (for the ends of the shells) You need  a batch of buttercream frosting and a batch of marshmallow fondant. I crafted this while watching 1/2 of the movie White Christmas (a requisite holiday activity).

Really it was pretty easy and fun… to which you will probably respond in your best marcel voice “oh yah compared to what??!!”

2011’s not quite resolution

well I am not really a hard and fast goal setter, crazy I know. I don’t do well with resolutions because well I am not the most disciplined person in the world and I actually detest overly structured things- they suffocate me (I know so surprising to hear this from an artist). Also because fundamentally I disagree with being so set on one path that I don’t take advantage of other things as they arise. I always prefer to do “end of year evolutions” instead of new years resolution (that is where I go through what I accomplished in the last year and say wow that was a great year—plus it is so much more reaffirming). I love the unexpected way opportunities and experiences unfold. This year I am semi- breaking my own no resolution rule and setting a goal of kicking out 50 paintings this year? can I do it—not sure, but it sounds really fun. So far this year I have done 6 and 3 (1/2s) and its only the 16th of January… so we’ll see what this year holds.

One of the pieces I completed this past week street view 30x40 acrylic on canvas.

this morning I stayed in my pajamas

till 1pm and painted these while simultaneously playing ancient Egypt with palmer… and then to celebrate our fun morning we made a delicious 3 layer white cake with silky chocolate buttercream frosting… (okay I did a few small productive tasks in there too, but honestly not too many)

yesterday I was thinking about color and when I woke up I was channeling hans hofmann and couldn’t do anything else till I worked it out. Its crazy how your thoughts, emotions, & conversations spit themselves out in the form of paintings… it’s a strange form of catharsis and continuation…you somehow capture and concrete a given feeling, thought, or experience.

delicious

I finished this piece for my domestic series before my trip to jordan and somehow got too busy to post it.