The Birds, er... Apples and the Bees

Apples and bees. Two things that seem to be taking up all my working hours at the moment. I have created so many paper versions of them this week that I can almost taste the apples and hear the bees buzzing in my ears!

'Why?' I hear you ask. Well, I mentioned in my last post that Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is early this year, falling at the beginning of September. Consequently I am busy preparing this year's designs and distributing the cards where possible, before I shortly take my leave for a family holiday.

Apples and bees have become the Rosh Hashanah symbols. Festive meals usually include apples and honey to symbolize a sweet new year, thus the reason for my frenzy of apple and bee making! I am actually really enjoying creating them. I find that repetitive work like this can be quite relaxing and doesn't require too much thought, once I have come up with an initial design.

If anyone would like to wish their Jewish family and friends happy and sweet times in the year ahead, the cards are now in my shop, available in packs of five.

In between the Rosh Hashanah crafting, I have also been working on several custom orders. I know that one of the birthdays has now passed and so, below, you can see the 70th birthday card I made for a local gentleman, a Rabbi who served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army for 20 years, and is now a tour guide to China, Vietnam, the Galapagos and various other exotic locations.

From the photo I received of him I could see that his beard is probably his most prominent facial feature. I created a little paper version of the Rabbi and showed him surrounded by some Far Eastern icons - paper lanterns, an oriental style house and one of the famous Galapagos turtles - as well as the U.S. flag and soldier and a Star of David to represent his chaplaincy work.
I haven't yet heard what the reaction was to his card but hope that he was amused, rather than insulted, by it!