Inspired by a page in Robert Sabuda's Chronicles of Narnia. This interpretation shifts from the Narnia owl to a hieroglyphic owl. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the owl means a lot of things, which is why you see it so much, but chief among its meanings is the consonsonant sound "m."
I did not begin soon enough and ran out of time with this card so I rushed the finish. I made compromises for the sake of getting it into the mail that I otherwise would not have made. Once the wings were attached, the mechanism did not fit inside the outer dimensions of the card which was already established. The wings that did fit were too stubby. Ordinarily I would have started over with a smaller mechanism so that I could have the desired wingspan and the predetermined outer dimensions. Instead, I cut the height of the supports twice to try to get it to fit. When that failed, I cut the entire background out in parts and glued them onto a new background with the dimensions that fit the mechanism and with a wingspan I could live with, I also rearranged the hieroglyphic message for the new background. I also compromised with the complexity of the wing mechanism. Sabuda uses a more complex mechanism to fold the two portions of each wing. I eliminated that folding arrangement and attached the two portions (four total) to the bottom of the bird and to the back of the support. My wings fold differently than Sabuda's wings, and the two portions of each pair are not connected, so the bird appears to have four wings. That's OK. I know of Egyptian geese depicted with three wings, two flying and one folded.
Due to time constraint, I also decided to make an envelope that fit the card instead of a mummiform wrapping which is what I intended. Also I decided on not making an elaborate fresco cover for the card that would have taken a few more days -- plaster drying, watercolor painting, staining, matt cutting, binding, etc. -- instead I drew the owl hieroglyph on heavy Bristol paper and treated it as a painting. I don't feel so bad about this, after all, this is exactly the sort of thing the Egyptians themselves would have done when pressed for time or short of funds or working within constrained space. You might be surprised at the shortcuts Egyptians took continuously, in addition to their deeply held philosophy on not finishing anything completely. And not just abbreviating standard compositions on the walls either, they even smashed dead pharaohs into their caskets, breaking bones and bashing their noses in order to force fit them inside when the dimensions weren't quite exactly right. And that's just wrong!
The message related in hieroglyphics inside the card is a simple birthday message that includes the name of the recipient and the date. I also included a translation separately with a brief explanation of my choice of spelling and arrangement for the name. Oddly, I can find no word for party or for celebration. I know Egyptians had a lot of banquets because there are so many paintings of them, but there's a big difference between banquet and a simple birthday celebration. I substituted the word for "festival," although a birthday celebration is not quite a festival either, one must make allowances and it does convey the idea.
This is the finished head and body ↓
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