Winging Cakes

What a busy baking week!  (Or two weeks rather)  But that's a good thing!  
I was asked to make two full sheet cakes for the winging ceremony at Whiting Field.  (For you non-military readers, this is basically the graduation ceremony from flight school.  They get their "wings" and are turned out into the fleet.)  So, this was an honor!   The client decided what to say on the cakes and that one needed to have wings on it and the other would consist of the different squadron patches.  So I got to work.  
I started with the squadron patches because I knew they would take a couple of days to fully dry.  I piped these bad boys with royal icing.  (Talk about time consuming!)  But I think they turned out rather well!  - Don't worry, I went back and dotted the "i" in helicopter!
Confession:  My blue buttercream was "almost"too thick, which made the writing a little difficult.  Not to mention that I hate to see my own handwriting on a cake.  Anyone else have that problem?  

For the wing cake, I ended up going with an edible image of the Naval Aviator wings and the Saudi-Arabian wings.  (We had a foreign nation student at this winging ceremony)

 These cakes were so huge, that if they had been any bigger, they might not have fit in the car!  The cakes themselves were 18x24 inches and the boards were made of plywood 22x28 inches.  They probably weighed 50 lbs. each!  

The cakes were a huge success and I heard some rave reviews.  And like I said earlier, I was honored to do these cakes.  Good luck to all the "wingers."  I hope you all have a very successful career!