Army Retirement Cake

Given only a day to design & create this army retirement cake, I was working through the night after my girls went to bed.  The gel icing colors I had to use for decorating this cake were standard green, brown, black, & ivory.  It took me trial and error to blend the colors to create the "army" camouflage colors.  The camouflage was made with vanilla buttercream.  I was asked to write: "Happy Retirement" as well as, "Well Done, Good & Faithful Servant" so I needed to make sure the background would allow the words to be legible.  So I opted to keep the center an ivory color, and use forest green buttercream for the words.

Waiting for the cake to cool, I created the dog tags, which were the only things requested.  I had extra time in the morning, so I created the grenades and the bullets.  I used cupcake gem balls for the dog tag chain, only had white pearl, so I painted them with edible silver dust.  I also painted the dog tags with edible silver dust to get the "silver" look.  The dog tags, grenades, and bullets were made with fondant.

After piping the different colors for the camouflage, I waited until the "crust" formed so that I could use my high density roller to smooth out the colors and create a nice flat fondant look.  The pearl balls were individually placed with tweezers to create the "chain" look.

Thank you for your 28 years of service!