Separatist's War Council Meeting - Medium

For my oldest son's birthday, we decided to recreate the scene in Ep. 2 where the Separatist Council meets in the war room on Geonosis.  The scene was not all that hard to create, BUT it's big.  Really big.  This is one for a crowd!

First, I rounded up Hasbro figures of all the war council members.  A few extra Geonosians are good.  (I found most of the figures used on eBay and only paid a couple of dollars for them. The figures were a birthday gift for my son too - added to his collection.) 

To get the needed height, we started with Styrofoam rings from the craft store.  We stacked 2 rings then covered with red duct tape.  The Styrofoam also serves as a base upon which we built the walls.   We added dowels to give the walls extra support.  These also held up a wire ring (also from the craft store) that is used for finishing.  Note that we did cut a "door" in the ring.  There is a door way in the scene, and we used that little bit of Styrofoam to hold up the Geonosian in the air.

The walls are my favorite large-scale building material: Rice Krispy Treats.  I made 4 large (10x14") pans of treats - each containing a double batch of mix.  (Use the recipe on the back of the Rice Krispy cereal box.)  Let these set overnight to get completely firm, then run bamboo skewers through them and mount them upright on the Styrofoam base as shown.  Curve them carefully to create the room.   To be safe, I added a backing of heavy paper, and we looped some string around the dowels. 

The war room is covered in a rich reddish tapestry.  I used Froot-by-the-Foot, the red/blue tie dye flavor.  I believe 1 had 12 boxes.  (This comes in boxes with other colors - I used a few of the yellow/orange ones for the wall hangings, but honestly we had a lot left over that we didn't use.  I gave them to kids at the party.)  To make these, cut lengths of the ribbon that fit the height of your walls. Lay them slightly overlapping on a cutting board, then dipping a finger in a bit of water, moisten the edges. Use a rolling pin to press and seal them into a sheet.  Affix the sheet to the walls with toothpicks.  This is hard at first, but you pretty quickly get the hang of it! 

We added some LED lights around the base for fun.  


The holographic war table was the "cake" part of this scene.  My son likes snickerdoodles best of all, so I made 3 giant cookie-cakes using the Wilton 9" cookie cake pan.  (You can use my recipe or else 2 tubes of refrigerated cookie dough.  Sugar cookie and chocolate chip doughs work well.)  The table top was one of the cookies.  I trimmed the other 2 cookies into 6" rounds and used those for the base of the table.  (Use a 6" cake round as a template for trimming.  We just ate the leftover bits.)

 

The whole cookie cake served as the table top.  I turned it upside down, so the flat surface was on the top and placed an 8" cake round under the it so it could sit on top of the stacked 6" cookie bases.  You can see it here, after I pulled it off the base to serve.  
 

With the 9" cookie upside down on the base, I rolled white fondant and cut a circle using the cookie plan as a template.  I let this harden for a couple of minutes, then placed it on top of the cookie.  I then rolled red fondant and cut a 6" circle to go on top, as pictured.  I added the holographic details by gently warming and trimming gummy bears.  The large elements are 3 Swedish Fish, warmed and smushed together, with a toothpick to hold them up.  I had some pearl luster dust that I rubbed around the white edge to give it some shimmer. 

I finished the scene by positioning the Hasbro figures.  I hot glued one of the Geonosians to a clear plastic floral pick so he could fly over the scene.  The pick is inserted into a pit of leftover Styrofoam that we taped to the bottom of the scene to support him. 

Lastly, I covered the back of the scene with a bit of red fabric that I had left over.  It gave the war room a finished look from behind!