Egyptian cake card

Hmmm.  Maybe this isn't the best lens for this sort of thing given its shallow depth of field.  I'll do another set with another lens when the sun is stronger.

This card depicts Egyptians in the industry of making a birthday cake, which of course they never did.  But if they did make a birthday cake, they'd need wheat, honey, eggs and milk.  So I drew all that.  The central figures are slightly larger than the rest.  The card is intended for a gay man living in San Francisco so there's a noticeable absence of women involved in this cake, which is ridiculous because women would certainly be at an Egyptian party all decked out in their finery.

The cover of this card is a tiny fresco (watercolor on plaster) with a double matt. The picture painted is three glyphs I made up to suggest a birthday cake.  The back is also matt board.  The design of the card is a simple stand-up "V" mechanism, six of them parallel in a chevron arrangement, which allows the card to be loaded with figures that all stand up simultaneously.  

The card will not have an envelope, rather it will be wrapped like a mummy in a preposterously large sheet of paper from a roll, with repeated foldings, with amulets spread throughout between the layers so they drop out when the card is unwrapped.  The paper amulets will be drawn on two-layers front and back glued together of card stock, scarabs, eyes of Horus, Serket,  Djeds, Was staffs, ankhs, winged solar discs, etc., the usual funerary iconography, all this stuff vaguely relating to death and a culture long passed, then -- BANG! -- a card depicting an abundance of and joy for life. 

If I ever got a hand-made birthday card like this I'd piss myself, so I hope that's what happens to the person I'm sending it to.  

This is one sheet of sketches, eventually there were three sheets of sketches.

Shown below:

Wheat field, hoeing, gathering, winnowing, milling

Duck egg collecting

Apiary, hieroglyphic bees, honey gathering

Milking

Pantry

Mixing

Not shown below:

Baking

Offering tables

Gift conveying

Rejoicing

Cake presentation

The blue stripe is suggesting the Nile river running through a fertile valley.

The figures were glued upright to the white tabs that fold flat when the card is closed.