Muppets Birthday Card

5:47p.m., Mon 28 Nov 2011

Emma loves The Muppets. She even has her own Muppet who we call Emma Too and who was born at the FAO Schwarz toy store last year.

Every birthday and Valentine's day we like to make each other a card rather than buy one off the shelf - they mean much more that way.

So this year, I pulled together a Muppets birthday card. I can't claim the design as my own - it's a retread of Alfonso Diaz' winning design in a competition run on threadless.com.

I liked the colour swatch feel that Alfonso had created, so that remained, but I had to juggle the colours around and add two more characters to allow room for all the letters in B I R T H D A Y.

The blue character you don't recognise is Emma Too and, because she's blue I had to give Gonzo a purple hue. I've added Sam The Eagle (who's harsh features and symmetrical face really lent itself to the feel of this design) to allow for the extra letter. Miss Piggy's face has more detail than Alfonso supplied, her face is less graphic, but closer to the actual puppet I think.

I also drew faces for Zoot (my favourite muppet) and Dr. Teeth, but they didn't make the cut - the whole thing was starting to feel cluttered. Sometimes less is more.