stephen's 60th birthday card

Because this is a big birthday this year, I wanted to go a little bigger on my usual photoshoppy birthday card. It became a number of pages long, which makes it harder to share on social media, so I thought I'd post it here.

I was thinking of something that could celebrate him in his many guises, show off the different fun and creative things he's done down through the years, and the idea came to me of putting on an old Hollywood fashion show where the models were Stephen in some of his many alter egos. I vacillated between the color fashion show sequence from The Women and the musical fashion show sequence from Roberta. Though I think, of the two, he likes the former movie more, I chose Roberta because it allowed me to play with the rhyming verse Fred Astaire performs throughout the piece. He recites these different quatrains as the models show off their various outfits:

We endorse
This Polo rig, of course,
And for an added thousand francs,
we furnish horses

Or if you're doing splits
on skis at St. Moritz,
You'd be the best faller-downer
on the courses.

Now take the dowager who's glad
to leave her watchman for tea,
She wears this patriotic plaid
and meets a Scotchman for tea.

Ha-ha, when summertime begins,
this costume always wins,
when fifty million little Frenchmen
clap their fins.

For hunting grouse or quail,
Roberta ran up this suit,
The modest price includes the bag,
the gun, and two ducks to shoot

And should Amelia Earhart care
to get a breath of air,
this is the last thing in the world
she'd ever wear

Tis the hour for dry martinis,
Parks full of little Fords and Isotta Fraschinis
The Ritz bar is serving caviar and weenies.
Madame is there.
And from Roberta she has something that is too divine on
the sort of thing your jealous friends would love to spill their wine on.
For your inspection,
Our cocktail collection.

The one problem I had with my big idea was finding images to play with. I just couldn't find what I needed. I was lucky enough, though, to find the complete film online, and as a last resort, I had to play the sequence in full screen mode and take screenshots. Which meant I had to work to make the Stephen parts of my pictures look of lesser quality. Ah well. But here it is.

From top to bottom: Madeleine Prévert (a character Stephen played during the aughts), the Countess (who became la Condesa, and then the Grand Duchess, a drag character he played in the nineties), Stephen as a soldier from the opera Carmen, Stephen with George Michael hair in the eighties, Judith et Holopherne, and finally Earl Bungalow, who has been known to recite poetry at exclusive parties on the continent..

Anatomy of a birthday card: July, 2017

Sometimes when Stephen and I do birthday or anniversary cards for each other, we're able to take an image and simply change the faces out with our own or update in small ways. Sometimes one of us gets a bee in her bonnet and has to collage something together using more than one or two images. This year, I had an idea to have Stephen in a garden with a paintbrush, painting flowers into existence. When I googled to look at initial images of pretty women (because, you know) in gardens, I came upon all these old fabulous illustrations for seed packets and catalogues.

There wasn't a single that suited me best, so I created my card by cobbling together pieces of different illustrations.

For the outside...

...and...

And for the inset...

The backgrounds and flowers came from the first two illustrations (one of which, you'll notice, isn't a seed packet or catalogue but a farm annual) (incidentally from a company who shares names with Stephen's grandmother on his mother's side, the one who was a great influence on him, encouraging him to be an artist; it was one of her married names... she had a few... she led a very interesting life. Stephen wrote blog posts about  Elizabeth Pennington Foster Matson Alberts Dahm Burpee here and here) (where was I?) (to get you up to speed, I started this sentence saying the backgrounds and flowers came from the first two illustrations...) and I cobbled together the wording from the wording on these as well. Then with the inset illustration, I had to expand the area of the peas and that took more cobbling. As did photoshopping out background lettering and details and expanding the space of the outside backgrounds. So, yeah, this card took a good long time.

The illustration for the inset, interestingly, is an ad for a stove company. But it worked great as a stand-in for one of those insets of impeccably-dressed ladies in the garden. I'll admit, I allowed Stephen's face to be probably a tad larger than it should have been. It was small enough as it was and, with making him a woman, I was losing clarity and recognizability when I reduced it, particularly for the printing of the card, and the primary goal is to create something that is Stephen.

The image I used for his face was an outtake from a Madeleine Prévert photo session:

We drove out to the Oregon Country Fair for his birthday yesterday, and had a picnic breakfast of sandwiches and cava in the parking lot as we waited for the fair to open, and he opened his card then.

He was surprised when I told him a little bit about the process and told me it looked like I'd just put his face on a single illustration, so whew, I knew I'd done what I'd set out to do. But if you want to see something really pretty, you should see Stephen's little flower garden along the side of the house, the first of much more gardening to come for our still new home.

a moment in the day: valentine

The lovely Valentine's Day breakfast Stephen made us is all eaten and both bowls licked by a happy dog, and we sit up in bed, glasses of mango juice and cava. He hands me the card he made me. I hand him the card I made him. We open them simultaneously, laugh and start making comments just about simultaneously. Read the sweet notes inside. Nicholas curled up in the hole made my Stephen's half-crossed legs. We talk about the cards. Share a quick clink of glasses.

"So," I say. "Is it time to go show off?"

*

As Stephen said when he posted my card image on facebook: "Oh, yes, it's that time again, because our love ain't real if it ain't shared on FB!"

And my blog, apparently. Here's a little more detailed post to show off even a little more.

Stephen's card to me started with this glamorous and iconic picture of Marlene Dietrich.

In a way, our cards to each other are like his paintings and my writing - a way to be what we wish we could be, and a lot of the time, it's all about glamour.

Speaking of glamour, below is the original image he used for his second element in the card. La Crawford.


[as a side-note, often when i type the name joan crawford, it comes out crawrod. i don't know why.]

He eliminated Crawford this time around and just nabbed that lovely, very old-Hollywood plaster column shaped like feathers. The finished product:

Of course, he's lying when he says I never neglect my glamour. It's lovely to have a husband with such skillz, to Photoshop me some glamour now and then.

The detail (Can you tell where I end and Dietrich begins? Nope.):

For my card this year, it was easy to be timely. Stephen's been spending the last couple weeks on stage at the Keller Auditorium supering for the opera Carmen. Tonight is closing night, in fact. I found this lovely old theatrical poster from 1896.

Had to do some work on her very interesting hairline and remake some of the letters to get his name in there. What was the most fun about doing this was that the original picture of Stephen was in black and white and I had to work to colorize it the way I wanted so that it would blend in with the poster. Then I remembered we originally took the picture in color. Oops.

birthday showoff

Stephen and I have a little tradition going where, for birthdays, anniversary and Valentine's Day, we get all creative with Photoshop in making cards for each other. I like noticing how often we come up with similar angles, similar themes, similar approaches while working separately on each other's cards. This year has been like that. At least with our birthday cards. First, we both went a little overboard. Second, we both went for a movie theme and multiple pages. Third, we both alluded to (this one's not surprising) Stephen's recent injury and recovery. Stephen's card to me (it was actually a second card - he made me two!) referenced With a Song in my Heart, one of his favorite movies. He cast himself as the suffering star Susan Hayward and me as her plucky nurse, Clancy, played by Thelma Ritter. You can check out his blog post about it here.

For my birthday card to him, which I'll be giving to him at dinner tonight, I chose one of my own favorite movies, one that I believe has become as much a favorite for him as With a Song in my Heart has become for me. Or anyway, I hope so. Here is Stephen's recovery from injury a la Metropolis. It's mostly just pictures. After all, it's a silent movie.

And one more small one for the back of the card:

gods and foolish grandeur

People who know me won't be surprised to find that if I were going to build myself a husband, I'd start with Joan Crawford. I mean the glamorous Joan, not the whole Mommie Dearest thing.







But would I start with young Joan?

Or older Joan?

In putting together this year's Valentine's Day card for Stephen, I went with both. My main image was the early Joan with the heart-shaped hat. I so wish I knew where that lovely photo came from and exactly what year it is. After a long while of looking through pictures of Stephen as Madeleine Prèvert, I found one that seemed to match, angle-wise and lighting-wise, and tipped the face in over Joan's.

But he looked a little sad. Plus, I wasn't completely happy with Joan's hair. Maybe he wasn't either. Which is where the photo of older Joan comes in.

I got a nice, smooth bit of hair from photo number two and then Photoshopped young Joan's mouth back in, plus some shadow along the face from the hat and various tweaks to make it look its best. I wanted the card to be reminiscent of fashion ads from the twenties, so I took the image into Illustrator to finish it off. I love the way a lot of the photos in those old ads are framed.

In his Valentine's Day card to me, Stephen's creativity came from a very different place. I don't have any in-progress versions to show off all the intricate Photoshop work he had to do on his, so I'll just give it to you as I saw it. 

The envelope.

The outside.





Um, whoa.
 

And a detail on the inside.

Stephen as Hercules.

By way of I Love Lucy.

Plus, as he's pointed out, he kind of looks like Mandy Patinkin from Sunday in the Park with George.

Greek god or Hollywood goddess, lovely or wacky, that's my husband.

anniversary card show-off

Today is our sixth anniversary. Stephen and I spent yesterday and today at the beach with Nicholas. Stephen did all the legwork (thank you!) to find us a place to stay, where they take dogs, and the three of us did some frolicking on the beach - in the spitting rain yesterday and in the sun today.

This morning over coffee we exchanged anniversary cards - and that means here comes this year's anniversary card show off blog post.

First his:

Hee!


Then mine:

birthday card show-off

Yes, we have to do the day-after show-off of the birthday card. This time it's my card to Stephen. The painting of Stephen's that I used is owned by the gallery owner of Winston Wächter Fine Art in Seattle. Note the mouse sneaking into the hairdo.

The original painting.

The outside of the card.

The inside of the card.

cupid

When I opened Stephen's Valentine's card yesterday, I said, "You'll be surprised how similar mine is."

I kind of love that we had the same creative impulse leading up to this year's V-Day. But I ask you, how could we not?

Nicholas as cupid. Above is Stephen's card to me. Valentinian Arithmetic. Who says Stephen is a Scrooge when it comes to Valentine's Day?

And below, mine.

There he is. Not only Nicholas as cupid again, but we used the very same Nicholas picture. I used two, but still. Here's the detail:

 [here's the

cherub whose

accoutrements

I usurped

for nicholas'

wardrobe.]



 Up close, you can see the various parts of the piece have different textures, but I tried my best to get something close to the original image I was playing with, which was a vintage, Victorian-era valentine. I tried like mad to find a texture for Nicholas that would emulate the card, but ah well - this was as good as I could come up with, and for a small, printed card it was good enough.

I kind of love that in the vintage valentine, it looks like the gentleman is groping his fair lady's breast...

Here's the original. I tried to find a picture of Stephen that was close enough that I could keep the moustache, but alas. Biggest part of the job was slowly recreating sky at the top and sides of the piece so I had room for my doggy cupids. All the extra sky came from those tiny bits of blue bordering the flowers, so it was a painstaking process.

I should mention that Stephen's just as obsessive about this stuff as I. The shadows around Nicholas on the satin sheet? All recreated by Stephen via Photopaint.