The Year of the Horse 2014

Happy Chinese New year 2014!
(the year of the horse)



Ben (my husband) decided to make an orange meringue pie to give to the family that runs our local Chinese restaurant for the start of the 15 day Chinese New Year.
They were sweet and gave us this totally awesome solar-powered changing-light globe for Christmas.
So we wanted to return the favor and show respect for their holidays too.  

The custom is to surround your gift with red to ward off evil spirits.
Have any of you ever seen a red cake box for sale?
Me neither.  So I made one.

I wanted some sort of writing or picture on the top of the box just to make it more clear visually where the front of the box is.  When I found out this was actually the year of the WOODEN horse, I had an idea to make some thin pendant out of wood somehow.  But I wasn't quite up for that right now.  So I made it out of paper instead.  I hope the "grain" of gold ribbon behind the horse looks a little like wood.  hehe!

The whole thing turned out quite a lot more fancy-looking than I intended.
But the looks on their faces was really fun to see.


Here's pics of the box :

Pie Box


open box


inside tray


We ate dinner first & THEN gave them the pie to avoid too much of a scene about it.
So we haven't heard how they liked it yet.
I'll update later about that.

Oh & I snapped enough pics of the box before it left so hopefully I might be able to put a dorky little animation together to show the box design better.  Nothing but raw pics right now, so might take me a minute to get that done.  (If I decide to even mess with it  hehe )

(link to PRIVATE gallery version)

And here is an animation of the box.
I suppose a normal person would just take video.
I'm apparently not normal, then.
LOL!

(Slick spoiler title to open & close the animation)

GIF-YOTH-2014:

I superimposed the pie in as an afterthought with the pics I had.  *giggle*

 OKAY, so .....

Here's the second half of this project!



I used the parts of the horse that were cut out, to make a wall hanging for a long time friend.
(This time, the horse stands out from the background.)
She loves horses and her favorite color is blue.  I used the same red paper from the pie box, and painted it blue.

Here are a couple image scans that are laid flat so you can see the painting more clearly.

Click here to see the FRONT:

Click here to see the BACK:

And this is a close up detail of the horse:

Detail:

It's a little hard to see on the scan because it's flattened, but there's a built-in hanging tab on the back.  If hung without a frame, it has a bowed shape, sort of like a sconce shield.  (It is, however, standard 5x7" and only 2 sheets of cardstock +paint thick so could be put in a frame easily.

It was done in enamel spray paint and latex.  So it should retain some of it's flexibility for a while.  I gave it to her yesterday & told her if she wanted to keep pressing it to get it flatter, she could.  The way she chooses to hang it is really up to her at this point.  (Flattened & framed, or raw & bent.)  


Here's a shot of how it looks as a wall shield.  This shot also shows the textured surface relief better too.

texture perspective:

Hmmm, I think that pretty much covers it.

I do have one, last thing I want to do with this image.  Haven't done it yet, so will need to post again with that later.  Gonna have a wee bit of digital fun with it.    My friend's gift is a two-parter.  

KBYE! (for now)

P.S. She appreciated it very much. lol

P.P.S. (Here's a link to the private post)

And Finally ...

DIGITAL PLAYTIME

A forum avatar and signature set for my friend.
(Ironically, she doesn't use the internet much, but I made it for her anyway lol)

profile avatar




forum signature
(Not sure I'm pleased with this, might fix)





And here's a large scale digital version I can have in my portfolio as a happy by-product!