How to make a three layer Grateful Dead cake with marzipan topping

As part of our first handmade holiday we decided to make a special cake at home for my husband's 32nd birthday.  I recently learned how to make marzipan which opened up a whole new world of baked goods to me as you can color and mold it into anything!  So here's what I did...

First we made marzipan for the top, here's the recipe:

2 tubes of almond paste (don't use marzipan paste!)

1 egg white

2 tablespoons of pure almond extract (don't use immitation!)

2 cups of confectionary sugar

*mix this all together till you have a consistancy similar to play dough

I then seperated it into 3 equal parts and used the wilton's paste dyes to dye it

blue, red and left one part off white.

If you cover this it can sit for a while

we made it the night ahead and it was still great 2 days later!

**Thank you again Falon!! You saved the day!!**

I used two boxes of yellow butter cake mix (john picked it not me) mixed according to the box.

I split these into 3 round cake pans sized 7,8 and 11 inches. 

Make sure you level off each cake so they will sit nicely on top of each other.

I used a plain white whipped cream frosting between the layers as well as to frost the whole cake.

I then added the tie dye affect to the cake by dropping liquid food coloring all over the cake and swirling with a toothpick. 

Be careful not to swirl it too much, just enough or the colors get a bit murky

Then I added the marzipan steely.  I found a picture online copied that. 

I did it piece by piece, first the red and blue circle in the skull, then the lightening bolt, next i did the thin layer of white around this and connected it to face.  I made this by using 3 different size white ovals and squishing them together with my fingers as I went so they looked like they were one.  I next added the blue and red around the outside.  I had marzipan left after this so I dyed a small ammount black and used that for the eyes and nose.

For the finishing touch I outlined the whole thing with black frosting and added teeth. 

Lastly I wrote Happy Birthday!!

Here's the finished project, candles and all.

It was so much fun to make.

I cannot wait for Caleb's birthday next month.

Any ideas for a theme for an 11 year old boy's birthday??