Happy Birthday Balloons

A customer asked me for a 21st birthday card for her nephew. No specific hobbies were mentioned so I decided to recreate this card since I had really enjoyed making it. My customer was very happy with it.

Cards for the guys are always hard when there isn't a theme to work with. For these cards I just went with a general birthday theme. You can't go far wrong with balloons and presents! 

I don't often make the same large card twice but in this case a new customer contacted me after browsing the blog and asked whether I could make this pretty pastel coloured card once again. My cards are never exactly the same but I made sure to add the right number of balloons, in a similar shade, and to pop in a striped party hat and a slice of cake, just like the first time. I hope that the birthday girl liked it.

Tiger, Tiger

I've mentioned my Dad's passion obsession for Hull City A.F.C before. It's his local football team and they've done rather well this season. So well, in fact, that they will soon be meeting Arsenal for their first FA Cup final match at Wembley. Exciting stuff, except for the fact that my husband is a die-hard Arsenal fan and the kids, well they are divided. It's going to be fun in our house on match day!

Dad celebrated his birthday last week and his card simply had to be a Hull City one. Dad's team traditionally plays in black and amber, often with a striped shirt design, hence their nickname The Tigers. I made a tiny striped scarf for his card and added a football and "Dad" in amber letters. He was very pleased with it, though unsurprisingly I wasn't the only person to send him a football themed card. 

Come on you 'Ull!

Another "Dad" also celebrated his birthday recently. This gentleman was turning 70 and his daughter wanted a special card showing him wearing his favourite black baseball cap and with a camera in his hands. George the Whippet had to be shown too and, yes, I was asked to make him a grey/blue colour.

I'm told that "Dad" loved the card. Not sure what George thought of it.

Carmel Caves

We could have stayed longer at Tel Dor but the Carmel caves in the Nahal Me'arot Nature Reserve, just a 15 minute drive up the road, were calling us. I had read about the prehistoric caves, recognized in 2012 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the Love Love Israel Facebook group and, since caves and boys go well together, I decided that it was probably a good place to take my family.

The three excavated caves in the reserve are up a steep flight of stairs, on a fossil reef that was covered by the sea 100 million years ago. The first discoveries of prehistoric remains were made when this area was being scoured for stones to build the Haifa port. In the late 1920's Dorothy Garrod, a British archaeologist, headed the first archaeological expedition, receiving assistance from a British feminist group on the condition that exclusively women carry out the dig. Way to go Dorothy!

In Me’arat HaTanur (the Oven Cave), the first on our route, the strata Garrod's team excavated are clearly marked, spanning about 150,000 years in the life of early humans. Early man used this large natural cave as a shelter, campfire and housing. The cave has no roof and is open to the west side. It resembles a chimney, and was therefore called "Tanur" (Tabun in Arabic). Both Homo sapiens and Neanderthal skeletons have been found in the area, raising the question as to whether they lived side by side.  It is also interesting to note that the soil in the ancient layers of the cave is composed of sand which indicates that the beach line reached to the entrance of the cave in ancient times.Today it is 3.5 kilometres to the west. This was a result of global warming in those years (250,000-150,000 years ago), when the sea level increased significantly following the melting of the icebergs.

A display on the daily life of early man as hunter and food gatherer occupies the bell-shaped Me’arat HaGamal (the Camel Cave).

The last cave we visited, Me’arat HaNahal (the Stream Cave), the largest at 90 metres deep, was actually the first discovered. An audiovisual presentation inside the cave told us a little about the early humans living there. A burial place with 84 skeletons was found just inside the mouth of the cave. A model skeleton outside illustrates burial customs of the Natufian culture, 10,000 years ago (above). The skull is decorated with shells - a common Natufian burial practice. A wall was built as part of the cemetery, an important phase of human construction. The bone artifacts and stone tools discovered in the Nahal cave suggest that people who settled here, about 12,000 years ago, were the forebears of early farmers, with a social structure more developed than that of hunters and gatherers. There is also evidence that the Crusaders once used the cave to guard the coastal road.

Marked trails beginning at the car park lead to some beautiful areas of Mount Carmel. After our visit to the caves we decided on a short trail and crossed the dry stream bed after which the park is named to climb the opposite cliff wall - the "Finger" Cliff. The cliff is made up of fossilized reefs formed some 100 million years ago from carbonate skeletons of marine organisms. The kids skipped up to the top and back down again, well short of the 45 minutes we had been told it would take to climb the "Finger". Mister Handmade in Israel and I were, ahem, somewhat slower, but then I was the one armed with the camera and I of course had to stop and take some shots of the beautiful views. Grandpa, quite sensibly, had opted out completely and was waiting for us at the bottom, ready to buy some Kosher for Passover ice creams to revive us! It was a good idea and a terrific way to end a really lovely day.

Tel Dor

So another great Passover week has gone by. We travelled North, we travelled South, and as usual I have far too many photos to show you in one post! I'm going to split the posts up and introduce you to some fabulous places in Israel one at a time.

The first day of Chol HaMoed was the day that we travelled the furthest. Tel Dor is an archaeological site located on Israel's Mediterranean coast, about 30 km south of Haifa. Dor (meaning "generation" or "habitation" in Hebrew), was known as Dora to the Greeks and Romans, and was colonised by the Sea Peoples and King Solomon, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks and Romans and others, right down to the Crusaders rule of Palestine between 1099–1291. In 1799 the French army, commanded by Napoleon, retreated from the failed siege of Acre and camped at Dor. They dumped and buried their heavy canons, blew up the ammunition, and then retreated to Jaffa. In recent times the ancient port has uncovered archaeological treasures galore and the uninterrupted sea views from the “tel” or mound make it a breathtaking place to visit. We had a wonderful time there!

In 1882 Baron Edmond de Rothschild established what would become known as the Carmel Winery, with a branch in nearby Zichron Yaakov. He opened a bottle factory in 1891 to produce glass wine bottles for the winery and as we drove into Kibbutz Nahsholim, situated on Dor beach, the three-gabled building which is now home to the Mizgaga ("Glassworks") Museum came in to view. The museum houses a small but interesting collection of artifacts, including guns and other armament of the Napoleonic army, dug out of Tel Dor or salvaged from the seabed, and was the perfect way to begin our visit to the area.

An interesting aside, the bottle factory was managed by a young chemical engineer named Meir Dizengoff. When the factory closed (due to poor-quality sea sand, malaria and a lack of profitability), Dizengoff went on to become the legendary first mayor of Tel Aviv.

Dor is located in a beautiful area. To the north lie the Carmel range and the Carmel caves (our next point of call) and to the south stand the ruins of Caesarea, the seaport constructed by Herod the Great whose harbour was deeper and a better choice for a port and which eventually overshadowed Dor. The remains of the Arab village of Tantura lie a few hundred meters south of the archaeological site, as does the modern kibbutz and resort of Nahsholim.
The ancient city of Dor was built on a high mound jutting into the sea, with small bays bordering it on the north and south. These bays served as harbours as they were protected by a chain of islands acting as a natural breakwater. As we walked through the archaeological site we came across the hilltop remains of storehouses and public buildings, as well as the scattered remains of residential areas and a Roman aqueduct. In the thirteenth century A.D. a Crusader castle was built on the site and the remains of a Roman temple can also be seen. There are also fascinating rock cuttings in the bedrock near sea level and the kids, reluctant to stay dry so near to the beach, had a great time splashing in the rockpools and searching for shells to bring home.
Tekhelet, the blue dye once used in the clothing of the High Priest and on the tassels (tzitzit) of the tallit, was produced from a marine creature known as the chilazon. Diggers at Tel Dor have actually unearthed an ancient dye manufacturing installation for this product.

Tel Dor was first investigated in the 1920s by the British archaeologist John Garstang, on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, and since then several excavations have, and are still currently being, undertaken. The fact that there is a gorgeous beach right next to the remains of an old Roman temple makes Tel Dor quite an exotic place to visit. It is the perfect place for a clifftop stroll with its incredible mix of beauty, history and nature. I've already promised the kids that we'll go back.

Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread

Passover, or the Festival of Unleavened Bread, is clearly approaching when I find myself spending almost every evening cleaning and sorting through my home, and every morning cutting out white doves and colourful Star of David's for my holiday cards! It is all drawing to a close now since Seder night will soon be upon us and then there is a week of Chol Hamoed, "weekdays [of] the festival", to be enjoyed. Grandpa has arrived from the UK and we are ready for some great days out together.
Passover, or Pesach as we call it, is all about the food! We clean our homes thoroughly to remove all crumbs of chametz (leaven) to remember the Jews leaving Egypt who did not have time to let their bread rise, and we eat only "Kosher for Passover". You can read more about it in two of my previous posts here and here.

'Chag Pesach Sameach', a happy Passover festival, to those of you who mark the holiday. Enjoy this special week celebrating our freedom, and have a wonderful time with your friends, family and loved ones.

Oh Boy!

My lovely friend who requests cards for everyone in her family recently emailed me to tell me that her brother's family had grown. She needed a card for a brand new nephew and asked if I could show the whole family on it. My usual request for a family snap was promptly answered and I soon set to work drawing out the family group.

The proud big brother stands at the front of the group, whilst Mum and Dad, with their new son in Dad's arms, huddle together in the background. Once the family group was complete, I created some baby boy symbols - a bottle, pram and some little blue bootees - for the background. Gideon's name was added a week later after he had had his Brit Milah, the Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony.

I thought it would be interesting to show you how my cards come together, from the initial sketch to the final card. Most of my figures do have all their body parts, but in this case Mum's arms were behind Dad's back, so she didn't need any!

Spring is in the Air

The beautiful anemones which we saw in the south clearly had an effect me. I have often added flowers to my cards but when I was asked to make an anniversary card for a couple who have received my cards many times before, I needed to come up with something new. There was definitely something of the kalaniot - the anemones - on this card. And I liked it so much, I made it again, the second time around in different colours.

Flowers may pop up pretty regularly on my cards, but so do birds. This little bird has sort of become my "logo". You can see her - yes, she's definitely a female - here, here and here.

Spring is in the air!