Get Carded: Expect The Unexpected

Hello! Even after many years now of getting a handmade greeting card from me on his birthday, my husband still acts bemused when he views the latest one. Such was the case yesterday; he said he wasn't expecting the card to look as it did. I told him to expect the unexpected. He was doubly surprised when I pointed out that he had contributed the hand-drawn image on the card. 

The card's design began when I spied this as the top card in a pack from a vintage children's card game:

The card references my husband's name. The game is called Slap Jack and this deck was produced by Whitman in the 1970's. 

I decided it'd be fun to alter the card by adding a different face. Since it was going to be my husband's card, I decided to rifle through the box of old grade school papers his mom had saved to see if I could find something suitable. I think these papers date from when he was in 1st and 2nd grades, so we're talking mid-60's. 

My search yielded this:

I think my husband did a pretty good job on this figure, especially considering the fact that he'd been allowed to skip kindergarten. Thus, he was a year younger than the other kids in his grade. All I had to do was reduce the head portion of his drawing by half. I then cut a phrase out of another of his papers in the same box to alter the card further. And here's how the finished card looks:

Materials used:

• white card stock
• scrap of page from vintage science textbook
• printed image made from 1960's artwork
• "How good He is" cut from parochial school workpage
• "happy birthday" stamped with black StazOn ink

As I'd said, my husband was quite surprised to be told that he'd drawn the face on the altered playing card. I showed him the original drawing and asked if it had been meant to be a self-portrait at the time. 

He had no idea, since of course he didn't remember having made that picture. But I am quite sure that as he was working on it, he never dreamed it'd be featured on a birthday card some 50 years later.

But like I said, he should know by now to expect the unexpected!