A Vintage Easter

I found this vintage Easter card at a shop in Chicago this past week, and fell in love with it:



On the back, the sender is apologizing for taking so long to write back, and for doing it on such a small card. I guess some things never change, right?

Happy Passover

I spent the afternoon working on my first Passover card. It's based on the tradition of cleaning the house of chametz (any grain product that's already fermented or can cause fermentation) before Passover. Traditionally, it's done walking through the house with a candle, feather, and wooden spoon, which is what I've tried to depict with this card.

Still debating over whether I should write a "Happy Passover" message on the top of the card.

Sketching

A few nights ago, I thought it would be a great idea to make an Alice in Wonderland themed Easter card, namely around the encounter with the White Rabbit. The idea behind the card would be to wish the recipient an Easter filled with delightful surprises.

I sketched out a few possibilities:



As you can see, there is a reason why I work in collage. The parallelograms below Alice's feet are actually a sketch of my stand-out graduate card from a previous page - I'd cut out the bottom of the page earlier although I don't remember what for now.



(Yes, I use a regular notebook to sketch my ideas.)

And this is what I came up with:

More spring cards

I spent the night before the MPRE making this (after studying of course). It's addressed to a graduate who "stands out from the crowd." The hat is actually modeled off the design I made for my own college graduation hat, not that I'm trying to flatter myself by implying I'm a standout in any way. Actually, a lot of people in my department decorated their hats: my friend, who sat beside me, put a little bear on her hat, one guy dressed up as a pirate, and apparently there was another guy who decorated his hat in a similar way to mine. My friends, who had been trying to find me, told me about him. "That guy was really big and macho," they said, "and we thought, 'no, that can't be Michelle.'"

Anyway, the card isn't finished yet - I still need to write a "Congratulations." But just wanted to preview it here.

However, after the MPRE yesterday, I was able to finish these cards below:



The Easter Egg nest



The Russian Easter cake (kulich), which is taken to the church the night before Easter to be blessed.



The Octopus graduate, complete with a graduation cap, tassel, and lei (but no diploma! It will be mailed to him later.)

A Russian Easter

Easter egg bashing is a game Russian children play on Easter. One child stands still and holds a hardboiled egg while the other child takes another egg and smashes it against the still egg, the goal being to see which egg survives with the fewest cracks. The winner gets the opponent's egg. The children call out, "Christ is risen!" ("Khristos voskres!") when bashing the eggs together.

I've tried to illustrate this tradition in the card above, although it still strikes me as unfinished somehow. Maybe a "Happy Easter" in the white space between the children would do the trick?

33 variations

Easter eggs inspired by the matryoshka nesting dolls. The eggs in the top card were cut from a Russian language newspaper and painted in watercolor by me.

I called this post 33 variations because once this idea came into my head, I couldn't stop thinking about all the variations on the matryoshka Easter egg theme I could do. The 33 variations refers to Beethoven's variations of Diabelli's waltz - which he sent to all the great composers of the time and challenged them to compose a variation of it. Beethoven composed 33 variations. While sources vary on his motives, there is no doubt in my mind that his obsessive personality played a role.