Coffee, Biscuits, Golf and Gardening

A customer requested a card for her mum's 94th birthday. At her wonderful age she is not one for hobbies but her daughter asked me to put chocolate biscuits and mince pies on the card and a cup of coffee too.

I have shown this British mum holding a cup and saucer. She is surrounded by chocolate chip and Bourbon biscuits. I don't know if they are her favourites but they certainly used to be mine! Most British people will recognise these sandwich biscuits just from the shape. I also added some teeny-tiny mince pies as requested.

I made a card for this lady's 91st birthday and my customer at the time couldn't get over the likeness to her mum. It seems I got it right again.
"Lisa they are great as usual. You always capture the essence of the subject. [I am a] happy customer as usual."

This 80th birthday card was also made for a repeat customer. I made a tea and cake themed card for her mum's 70th last year. Dad's favourite things are golf, jigsaw puzzles, gardening, Scrabble and Rummikub, my customer told me. He has dark brown hair with some sliver streaks (but not too many!) and he tends to wear short-sleeved polo shirts when playing golf.

I have shown dad with a golf club over his shoulder and a gardening trowel in his other hand. Behind him is a red golf flag, with a tiny golf ball next to it. To his right are some Rummikub tiles and to his left some jigsaw pieces and Scrabble tiles. I added a green watering can and a couple of plants to represent dad's love of gardening. A big red number 80 marks his age.

"Thank you so much for the card for my Dad. The likeness is great." my customer wrote to me.

My own dad celebrated his birthday recently too. He's a keen gardener as well and in fact seems to have spent this whole coronavirus period in his garden! I had to make that the theme of his birthday card. I cut out a wooden workbench, then added some tiny plant pots, a watering can, trowel and secateurs. Finally I cut out the letters for DAD in bright red card.

He was very happy to receive it.

* This post has been shared on Share Your Style, Little Things Thursday, Creatively Crafty Link Party and Thursday Favorite Things.

Yoni's Album

Yoni celebrated his Bar Mitzvah back in March. His mum asked me to make him an album as a memento of the occasion. She sent me a copy of his Bar Mitzvah invitation and I designed the cover to match the colour scheme. Mum wanted the cover to be about Yoni being Bar Mitzvah and thought that it would be suitable to show him leining, or reading from the Torah. Given that his Bar Mitzvah was during lockdown, he was going to be doing this in their garden. She sent me a photo of their garden and asked if I could show it in the background. I included the blue fence and the stone coloured buildings of our city behind him.

I have shown Yoni reading from the Torah scroll. He is wearing the flowered shirt and blue waistcoat that mum sent me a picture of and a tie as well - very British! Yoni is right-handed, so he is holding the yad, or Torah pointer, in his right hand. The yad is used by the reader to follow the text during the Torah reading from the parchment Torah scrolls. It ensures that the parchment is not touched during the reading. There are several reasons for this: handling the parchment renders one ritually impure and the often-fragile parchment is easily damaged. Moreover, the vellum parchment does not absorb ink, so touching the scroll with fingers will damage the lettering.

I decorated five pages inside Yoni's album and this time mum wanted them to reflect his interests as a younger child. The first page, above, illustrates his love of animals, dinosaurs and jigsaw puzzles. I cut out the tiny jigsaw pieces to match the colour scheme of the Bar Mitzvah. I added some Lego pieces in various colours to the next page and then some of his favourite Marvel and DC superheroes: Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Aquaman and Black Panther. A page also featured the logo of Yoni's school robotics and programming club, below, bottom right.

Finally, the last decorated page shows Yoni's interest in various sports through the ages: cricket, fencing, pull-ups on the bar and table tennis. I cut out tiny pieces of equipment to represent each sport.

The lettering on the cover of the album, below, says Yoni in both Hebrew and English, and then Bar Mitzvah and the Hebrew date of his Bar Mitzvah celebration.

Returning to the album cover, Yoni can be seen wearing a white tallit prayer shawl with black stripes. The tallit is first worn by Jewish boys on their Bar Mitzvah. It is a rectangular-shaped piece of linen, wool or silk with special fringes called tzitzit on each of the four corners. Jewish men wear a tallit for morning prayer, during the week, as well as on Shabbat and other holy days.

Yoni's mum had mentioned the idea of having the first few words of his leining somewhere on the cover too. I suggested having them running along the white tablecloth covering the table where the Torah scroll has been laid. Yoni was reading from Parshat Shemot, the thirteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual cycle of Torah reading and the first in the Book of Exodus.
The verse his parents picked out from chapter 31 of Shemot was ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת לעשות את השבת לדרתם ברית עולם. "Thus shall the children of Israel observe the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant."

Yoni's mum was thrilled with her son's album. "It is perfect. I am so happy. You totally nailed it!" she wrote to me.

* This post has been shared on Inspire Me Monday, Craftastic Monday Link Party, The Really Crafty Link Party, The Good. The Random. The Fun., Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday) and The Happy Now Link-up.