A 'Little Mermaid' Birthday

[Text by Amberle Ferrian]

"A 'Little Mermaid' Birthday" (tlmbday.gif, 662x757x2, 18137 bytes) is the seventeenth in a continuing series of fine Disney fanart drawings by Bob Ito <ito@[...]>, and the third in the so-called "Bucketland Cards" series of handmade greeting cards. :-)

Those of you who read the April '94 issue of rec.arts.disney's own online humor magazine, DIS' 'n' DAT (edited by lar3ry gensch, <lar3ry@[...]>) may have noted that longtime r.a.d net.resident Tim Pickett <quetzal@[...]> turned 21 today, 1 May. And those of you familiar with Tim know that he has an abnormal attraction to a certain redheaded mermaid from a certain Disney animated movie.

In light of these facts, the Bucketeer Bodyguard Brigade and I, longtime "opponents" of Tim in the infamous r.a.d Water Wars, decided that Tim's birthday would really be special if we could find and introduce Ariel herself to him. After all, Tim has been a brave and chivalrous "foe", and he certainly merits our respect. :-) The only problem, of course, was getting Ariel to Tim. As a mermaid, she can't exactly walk up to his door and knock. And we wanted it to be a surprise, too. So we managed to smuggle her into a giant birthday cake. Unfortunately, it was a little too big to ship out of the country, so we had to remove one dimension from it before we could send it....

This is a scan of a handmade birthday card drawn by Bob and signed by him, David Cuthbert, David Uy, Jeff Wilson and myself, and distributed with Tim's permission. The image is divided into four sections as follows:

Upper left:  Front cover
Upper right: Inside of card
Lower left:  Envelope, also custom-drawn
Lower right: Bottom part of the back of the card

Tim's address and all personal messages to him have been deleted, since you don't need to see that.

Bob would also like to say that he's not entirely happy with the way Ariel turned out here, but unfortunately we were in a hurry. Bob drew the card a month before Tim's birthday, and while that may seem like a lot of time, bear in mind that we all had to sign it, so the card had to literally circle the United States before it could go overseas to Tim. Fortunately, he got it just in time.

Happy Birthday, Tim!

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