A ‘Coraline’ birthday

[Grey Havens birthday secrets revealed!]

For decades, for our kids’ birthdays, I’ve used our household dry-erase whiteboard to celebrate the birthday child and their current interests or occupations. As these things are wont to do, this tradition started relatively simply, but over the years the efforts have become increasingly ambitious, elaborate, and time-consuming!

I see I’ve mentioned this tradition once before, writing about the role of Tolkien in our family culture—we call our house the Grey Havens—and specifically this birthday whiteboard for James, probably the keenest Tolkien fan among us, on his 20th birthday.

The image at the top of this post—a joint design for the adjacent birthdays of our eldest and youngest girls—is the most ambitious and elaborate one I’ve ever done. The motif honors their shared love of an annual October viewing favorite here at the Grey Havens, Henry Selick’s delightfully creepy 2009 stop-motion masterpiece Coraline.

Here’s the original image I worked from, taken from the film’s final shot, of the Pink Palace¹ with the Cat on the sign out front. Dry erase markers are a blunt instrument, literally and figuratively, but I’m pleased with my homage to the look of this film.

The heart of the design is the rendition of the Pink Palace, largely constructed of horizontal strokes of pink or purple dry-erase markers, or brown or black for the roof tiles and a bit of orange for highlights. This was painstaking work,² greatly aided by the use of Q-tips for strategic erasing, allowing for the creation of clean edges and well-defined white space. Drawing long, straight lines when you often can’t brace your hand on the work surface is difficult!

“1630 Gaiman Lane” in my design is a concatenation of the birthday girls’ ages and, of course, the name of the author of the novella from which the movie is adapted.

The lettering of the girls’ names is inspired by the movie title design.

Mr. Bobinsky’s flag (near the Cat’s tail) is the coat of arms of the Russian federation. As best I could at that tiny scale, I made it the Greydanus family crest.

What does the Greydanus family crest actually look like? Here are a couple of versions: a battered, hand-painted wooden version and a tattooed version from a distant relation.³

Completing the birthday theme, cake decorator extraordinare

Suzanne, RN

did a Coraline-themed cake, with black buttons for added effect!

See more SDG art >

Related:

1. Trivia note: I have seen the real Pink Palace in person!

2. Halfway through this design might be the first time that Suzanne said to me, “You’re going crazy with this—it’s going to take you forever.”

3. How distant? That branch of the family uses the spelling “Greidanus.” There’s also a “Greijdanus” branch. Someday I’ll tell you the history behind the name!