Joe's tree pop-up card

This is a single-page pop-up card based on the opening page of Tomie dePaola's Brava Strega Nona!, popped up by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart. My tree is their tree with modifications that made it easier for myself, reduced its size, provided content for the vacant front, portion, and personalized it with initials and date. This friend does not celebrate their birthday and this card will be presented late. I was at a loss for an idea so I rummaged through a few books and settled on the tree. I'm substituting birds in the tree for Nona's  cartoon portraits of relatives. This took several hours. I don't know how many exactly, but it was finished over a course of two days. As the project progressed I began to find some relevance to the choice of a mature tree. I did not intend this. As it turns out, this friend is the most senior person that I know. There is something about seniority and the solidness of a tree that goes together. I cannot quite put my finger on it. It was not my plan and I hope it doesn't offend. This was a one off deal. No prototypes. No practicing. The content is colored with crayon, which is a really weird medium to use. It's all waxy! It flakes off all over the place and makes a proper mess of the whole work area. They break maddeningly. But they're fun! They cover a lot of area quickly, and they produce a naïve effect that is rather charming and permits all kind of rough execution. I like crayons. They're childish and innocent. I learned something this go around. The two posts that are the trunk of the tree are designed to lean backward. The layers of branches build onto the trunk therefore should not be perpendicular to the trunk but rather they should all tilt forward to compensate and be parallel to each other. This will display the branches to the viewer instead of tilting away. Built as it is, the branches tend to display to a person opposite the viewer and I do not like that. Were I to do it again I would make that correction. I would also build the tree trunk straight up and not lean backward. Oh well, live and learn innit.