A dear friend's birthday

So sue me. I've been a bad blogger. There's been a lot of non-blogworthy, real life mundanity happening so, as they say, when you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Not that there haven't been nice things...


One nice thing that got done was that I finished Marv's birthday present. I have been working on this for m-o-n-t-h-s. The concept for a project involving feathers started after a sweet story that Marv told me at the end of her visit here last August. We were in Portland in search of the perfect lobster roll before heading to the airport and saw a seagull feather on the ground. This reminded Marv of a woman she met on a cruise a few years ago who said, in essence, that if one really looked that one could find a feather almost every day. It didn't have to be a 'real' feather but you might find one in a painting, printed on fabric on someone's clothing, hear the word 'feather', or encounter a feather in any number of ways and that this was some kind of talisman. 


Nice story, nice thoughts then, just like that, I started seeing feathers. Almost every day. I collected some I found along the way and couldn't get the whole feather talisman thing out of my head so decided to do something with a feather theme for Marv, one of my oldest friends (in terms of time we've known each other, not necessarily age), who is having a special birthday today. 

This is the second iteration. The first altar book form had a different cover paper which just didn't work for a number of reasons. The button is a vintage goodie from my button collection. Buttons, like ribbons, find their way home with me without a thought to their ultimate use. Okay, so maybe paper and fabric do the same thing, but I digress...

The feather paper also went through two trials. I carved the feather stamp and stamped it onto some Rives BFK but that luscious paper is too toothy and the image bled a bit too much. This is a Japanese paper that had more of a coating so the ink stood up more on the paper and gave more detail.

The inner box has Maine birch bark at the base. The feather print on the bottom flap is a color copy of treasured Holly Bard fabric that was then mounted on top of faux gold leaf and the other feathers are ones that I picked up since hearing that story. Happy Birthday my dear friend!