Boy of Faiyum pop-up card

This card is intended for the birthday of a friend.

The idea for this card arose from an infatuation with this portrait, the funerary mask of a boy who lived in the Faiyum area of Northern Egypt during the Roman era. I wanted to try my hand at sketching the portrait and the idea of a boy catching frogs followed from that. What else would a boy do who lived on an oasis at the edge of a lake either near or actually in the marshlands. I can think of plenty of things. Do take a look at the portrait if you haven't already, it would please me for you to be infatuated too.

My friend has never mentioned to me any particular interest in Egyptian history, or Romans, or children, or frogs. There is no reason to believe he is familiar with the Faiyum portraits, or of the Faiyum area or any of its history for that matter, so the card has no relevance whatsoever. For some reason that cracks me up. To get through the mail something off the wall as this must be funny, but I wouldn't know. I never got anything apparently insane out of the blue.

A frog in the hand is worth two in a bush
Happy Birthday 2010

This card sure was fun to make.  I suppose having done this now got the 'boy with the golden crown' out of my system, so I can move on the next obsession.

I am disappointed with my version of the portrait. I thought it would be a snap and that my version would be perfect, but it's not. Oh well.

A LOT of card stock was gone through to make this card. As undisciplined a paper consumption as you can imagine. An entire grocery bag is filled with scraps and the room with the work table is a disaster. Most of the prototypes were retained. The recipient is going to get a lot of that too.

I intend to enclose those things in a separate envelope, much as the Egyptians themselves included mummified foetuses in their tombs, unidentified objects too valuable to trash but too useless to identify or to employ, or their usefulness used up, bundle them all together, and label the bundle similar to a canopic jar, and then include that package in the mailer along with the envelope for the actual card. The scrap package will be marked "DO NOT DISTURB THE CONTENTS OF THIS SACRED BUNDLE UPON PAIN OF CURSE" and "Prepared for Ritual Incineration" and "Herein are contained the mourned miscarriages, the painful abortive attempts, and all the excruciating unworkable prototypes whose untimely end is of no continued use to any living mortal who walks upon the earth, " and "Awaiting the arrival of the Wab priests, the Sed priests, and the chief of the Lector priests, the Hecktor priests to perform the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, the mourners, and Faiyum counselors, elders and officials to escort the procession to the pyre." All of which should fairly guarantee the packet is opened and its contents carefully examined. That way my friend will see the many unproductive paths, the choices that were made, the half-way steps, and the numerous little things and trials that were rejected.

Here is a separate page on the process if you care to see.

Egyptian crocodile pop-up card

This card is for a brother's birthday, five days off.  It purports to relate the myth of Sobek told over four pages of pop-ups, each page with several mechanisms each.

Did I say myth? I meant big fat lie. 

The pages are shown below separately before they were bound together in book form. 

The first page depicts a typical hunting scene as seen frequently painted on tomb walls packed with an improbable abundance of fauna. As in the wall paintings, the birds  are standard hieroglyphic forms arranged to appear as a flock that has been startled to flight. The hunters are on reed boats and they wield  throw sticks.  It is a fairly standardized idealized scene of an outing on the papyrus marshes.

The second page is a crocodile with an Egyptian man in its mouth. When the page is closed, the crocodile's mouth is wide open. The crocodile closes its mouth as the card is opened so the viewer sees the guy getting chomped. 

It's funny as hell. To me, anyway. I'm hoping the abrupt contrast with the peacefulness of the first page takes my brother by surprise and gives him a good larf.  

Alligator, crocodile, there is a difference, but I don't care about any of that here. The idea is to convey a dangerous, toothy, long-snouted, scaly, dragon-like river reptile. 

This is the main page. It was the starting point of the card's construction, and the basis of the story that the other pages tell. In my mind, the other three pages lean toward this page. It is the page I gave the most time and care.

The threat must be dealt with. A second party of hunters seeks out the offending crocodile to kill it and to neutralize the threat. 

The final page is an Egyptian fashion show arranged as a carousel of six models displaying various crocodile fashion items: shoes, purse, belts, gloves, hat, jewelry, etc. No background color. Plain white so that attention is drawn to the green crocodile bits used as garments and accessories. Models skin and hair is also penciled in color. The idea was to keep it simple but show a variety of bizarre uses. 

The carousel  is shown folding. 

The pages are glued together as a book. Backed with black mat board. A window is cut into a  third piece of mat board to frame a sketch of a crocodile. It's a quick sketch. They're all very rapid sketches, actually, I have virtually no patience for careful drawings. They all look goofy and scratchy but I don't care about that any more. The whole point is to be a little bit silly.

The hieroglyphics say "s", "b", "k", that is the way I chose to write Sobek. (Without a conventional crocodile determinative sign because the larger sketch is a crocodile) Sobek is the name of Egyptian crocodile god.  I have no idea offhand which city Sobek was associated or what period he had prominence. I also didn't check if this is the conventional way to write Sobek. I figure my way is good as any other scribe's. 

The envelope is made to fit.  It is tied with a humble string. No Egyptian -colored band, no ribbon, no extravagantly layered mummy wrapping this time, nor any protective amulets. 

Update: 

My brother never received this card, even though the proof of delivery states the package was delivered. And that makes us both sad, but mostly me.

When a package is too large for a PO Box, the clerk leaves a green card to notify the box renter that a package too large to fit is being held and to ask for it at the counter. My brother reports that he never got such a card in his PO box. 

When my brother asked the clerks to check for packages, the clerk states flatly that the package is "not in their system." Apparently they refer to a system that is different from the package tracking system available online to users. Perhaps a Packages-That-Are-Floating-Around-The-System system. Whatev. When presented with the tracking page that shows delivery, they shrug. He gets no cooperation or concern at all. 

I reported the loss on my end through the online tracking system but I never heard anything back. Except for a request to fill out a satisfaction survey that rated my experience with the handling of the specific case. Of course I panned it, and that was the end of that. 

It's gone now, lost to the vastness that is the USPO, and that's all there is to it.

Conclusion: Either the Post Office actually did deliver the package but to the wrong PO Box, the most likely possibility considering the tracking says "delivered at Concord" and it was addressed to a PO Box, and the owner of that box decided to keep the card, it is interesting after all, and I'm in the habit of not writing anything personal directly  on the artwork and so the card would have purpose beyond the immediate  intention. In that case, Happy Birthday you Asshole.  I hope you die spectacularly burning with the heat of a thousand suns. Or maybe just get a flat tire on your way home. Some karmic equivalency of keeping my brother's card when you know it doesn't belong to you and that someone is missing it. 

OR

My brother actually did pick up the card and both a) forgot about it, and b) lost it, which would be so incredibly stupid that it's not even worth considering. 

In case you're thinking I wrote the wrong PO box number, you'd be mistaken. I checked it, double checked it, and triple checked it the following day. I've mailed packages to the PO box before and since. In fact, that is how it became known that this one is missing. 

The next multi-page card goes out registered return receipt. Bastards. Keep in mind this is the same banality seen in government taking power to themselves seen in the VA intent on controlling ALL your health care and involve the IRS to boot and if that doesn't sober you, then nothing will. I try to refrain from my political opinions on these pages, but this is too much. Now all my brother has for my effort put into this are these pages and I'm lastingly angry about that.

astromoths pop-up card

Here is presented the tragic story of the very first NASA astronauts, before the monkeys and before the dogs there were moths, an experiment that met with an abrupt and ignominious end.  This little-known history is described here over four pages in a pop-up card intended for a friend's birthday.

Much use was made of the V mechanism. It stands up the astromoths, it provides the support for the blastoff smoke, flipping layers in opposite directions. It provides the armature  which flips up the rocket that is returning to Earth, and it provides the matrix upon which the chaos of the exploded lightbulb factory is depicted. Amazingly, that exploded mess folds back neatly because the "V" mechanism is so tight. Content is both attached onto the basic "V" structures, and through them.  It's quite versatile. The flaps are both concealed beneath the card backing and glued on top depending on the need for concealment.