WOYWW 441–Toe-vember and Kittens in Coats

Hi everyone and a happy WOYWW to you all. STILL nothing to show on my desk! I do have an excuse this week though, because there’s been quite a bit going on.

First of all, my hubby has made numerous trips to the vet with the kittens this week. Ruby’s wound was wide open again, so they put her in a little suit.

To start with, she rolled on the floor a lot, and did a bit of walking backwards to try and get it off, but eventually she settled down and accepted it. Phew. We thought that was the end of it.

Then Lily, who had been quite good with her stitches, started having a go, and a couple of days ago she ended up in a suit as well!

The vet told us to take Ruby’s suit off after two or three days, and when we did, she immediately started biting at her wound again, so back she went to have it re-glued, and she was back in the suit again.

This morning, my hubby called me to come quickly with the camera because Ruby had sprouted wings!

Anyway, the little body suits seem to be working pretty well, and they are not able to get at their stitches any more. We’ve got to take them back in about a week and they’ll have to wear the suits until then.

We’ve never had any trouble in the past with our female kitties after they were spayed. These two are such naughty girls!

Toe-vember

Our church has joined with others in a local project this month, called Toe-vember, to provide socks for the homeless now the weather is getting colder. They have stretched a couple of strings between two pillars at the back of the church and pegged the socks onto these. So far, all the socks have been bought in a shop, and they are all boring black or grey and they don’t look all that warm, so I thought I would raid my huge stash of yarns to make some nice brightly coloured warm socks. I’ve just started the second sock of my first pair.

I found a pattern on Ravelry which I have used for the shape, but I have used my own design for the colours. I made the largest size which I think will fit the average man. Hopefully I will get time to make at least one more pair before the project comes to an end – apparently it will be going on into December.

I found a brilliant Youtube video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KJSwdxdrgw – a tutorial on extra-stretchy casting on for ribbing. Wish I’d known this years ago! It’s really good, and just the thing for this project.

It’s years since I knitted socks and it’s fun to be doing them again. I thought I had some sets of four needles somewhere but I must have got rid of them as I normally knit with circular needles now. You need four needles for socks, though, because there aren’t that many stitches. I found some lovely sets on Ebay and decided to treat myself – these ones are metal, and each size is in a different colour, with the size etched on each one, and they come in such a nice zipped pouch. They are lovely to use.

It’s good to be doing something creative again, even if it isn’t in my studio.

WOYWW 427

As you will probably understand, there’s no change on my desk this week, so no photo to share. I have been spending all my spare time in with the kittens and making videos galore! They are 11 weeks old today and growing fast, very feisty and alternating between fits of extremely vigorous play and crashing out asleep for hours. I’m amazed at how much noise they make, thundering around on those little paws, with occasional yelps when the play fighting gets too rough, and lots of little chirrups from Lily.

Tomorrow, we will have had them for two weeks! How quickly the time passes. Their personalities and preferences and coming out now, and they have their favourite toys, and different food preferences. Ruby has decided she doesn’t like wet food and for a couple of days I was worried about her because she wouldn’t eat – she’d demand food extremely loudly (again, amazing what a huge sound this tiny creature can make!) and then when I put it down, she’d turn away, and go on asking. She loves the little kitten biscuits and wolfs them down. I am trying her on different brands of wet food because it’s important for her to have that as well, but at least they are both drinking plenty of water – something all our previous kitties have never done, at least, not from a bowl in a civilised manner, but out of the drains etc. outside!!

They are at this moment careering around my feet, ambushing each other and wrestling with each other. Half an hour ago this is how they looked.

Ruby playing in the basket suspended from the cat tree my hubby made for them.

Crashed out asleep. They often sleep on top of each other.

I tend to do more videos than photos because I can usually only photograph them when they are asleep because otherwise they are moving too fast! Here is my favourite video of them.

All the videos are on previous posts on this blog, and also on my Youtube channel (link in sidebar).

One non-kitten thing I did manage to do this week was to make a video slide show of the mixed media mini-album I made in memory of my dad for my niece. It’s a project I’ve been meaning to do for ages.

I recently acquired an app for the iPad called LumaFusion, which is a powerful video editor and I can do most things on that that I can do on Final Cut Pro on the Mac. Very convenient as the iPad is also used as the video camera and there’s no transferring of video files to be done. More slide shows will follow, of other albums I’ve made since. They take a long time to edit, but they are fun to do. I’m planning to rig up the iPad over my desk so I can start videoing myself at work again.

Health Update

I’ve got an appointment with my surgeon tomorrow morning. When I saw him last (about 3 months ago), he booked me in for a CT scan of my abdomen to check whether my parastomal hernia had returned because it was “inconclusive.” It turned out that some fat had come through. Nice thought, esp. as I’ve now lost so much weight!! Anyway, he wrote me a letter after that, saying he recommended leaving well alone – at our last meeting he’d said he’d be reluctant to open me up and perform major surgery again unless it was absolutely necessary. Sutured parastomal hernia repairs have a 100% failure rate, and it rather looks as if it’s on the way to failure already (I had the operation on 1st Feb.) so I’m hoping it won’t fail and cause another obstruction, requiring another major operation as an emergency. What I really want is elective surgery for the insertion of some mesh around the stoma to reinforce the area, so hopefully he will do this when the hernia finally returns and before I get into difficulties with it. I don’t suppose he will have anything new to tell me tomorrow.

When I saw the oncologist after the CT scan result came back, she said there was no sign of cancer, but they should have scanned my chest as well (metastases from bowel cancer often appear in the lungs) so I had another scan. A case of the right hand not knowing what the left was up to? No cancer evident, and they are happy to see me as arranged in November, which will be the 2 year anniversary of my all-clear.

I’ve been a bit rough with my ME just lately but that’s probably from overdoing things, getting the kitchen sorted again after the new pantry was completed, and all the rushing around getting the kittens and getting them settled in (nice, though!). I’m resting when I can, and spending most of the time with the kittens. They tend to sleep all afternoon, having worn themselves out with their morning play session, and we all cuddle up together!

Third Chemo Treatment

Yesterday I had my third chemo treatment, and on the previous day (Thursday), I had my vampire and oncology appointments. Full details on my Cancer Diary page.

Unfortunately they experienced some problems getting blood from the port this time, but on the third attempt, with me lying flat, they were successful.

Then I had my oncology appointment and saw the registrar, and I told her what a bad time I had had following my second treatment three weeks previously. She said in view of this, they would reduce the dose by 10 percent. She also doubled the dose of anti-nausea medication.

I discovered that the total number of treatments would be only eight, as opposed to the nine or ten I’d been anticipating. I have worked out that the last one should be on 16th October, and not going on into November as I had feared. This means that after the next treatment, I will be half way through the course! This makes me feel a lot better about everything.

The treatment proceeded as before, and again, despite the lower dose, I started to feel the effects during the last hour of infusion, and by the time they had finished with the final flush, I was feeling quite poorly. It wasn’t as bad as last time in that I didn’t have to take to my bed on our return home, and I managed to eat a small supper.

The effects are quite severe but not as bad as last time. This morning I rested half the morning in bed, and when I got up I felt so much better that I was able to spend an hour or two in my studio and finish the card I’d been making from part of the masterboard I made a few days ago. Photos will follow once the recipient has her card.

Towards lunch time I suddenly caved in with exhaustion and feeling shaky and nauseous, so I came down and took an anti-sickness pill. After a very light lunch I felt a lot better. I have been resting on the recliner all afternoon watching TV and DVDs.

Generally speaking, I have already started feeling a lot better than immediately after the second treatment, so hopefully I shall have a much more productive three weeks this time, which makes me feel more upbeat!

I hardly made any progress on my angel project during the last period, and I am now hoping to be able to crack on with that. I ordered a DVD on cloth art doll making and that arrived today, and I am very excited – the dolls, and especially their faces, look extremely complicated to do, but the instructions on the video are so clear and taken step by step, that I see no difficulty in managing to do it! Here’s a link to her DVD introductory video on Youtube, and I am very grateful to my blogging buddy Judy in Australia for sending me various doll-making links, including introducing me to this wonderful lady who is such an artist and such an excellent teacher too.

Something to Pass On, and General News

I have just watched one of Jennibellie’s latest videos, and was so impressed with it that I thought I would share it with you here, and hope that you will benefit from it. She has come across people in the field of art comparing themselves with other artists, and the underlying lack of confidence that causes this behaviour, and this video gives several very helpful pointers to deal with the problem, and to learn from it.

I am experiencing problems with Google at the moment on Firefox (is anybody else?) and am unable to comment on blogs or Youtube videos, and I cannot open Google Chrome (at least using this laptop – the iMac seems to be playing ball, but it’s on my desk upstairs, and when I am feeling poorly and exhausted, I prefer to use the laptop from the comfort of the recliner). If I can get this problem sorted, I shall be leaving my own comment on Jennibellie’s Youtube channel and also on her blog, to let her know that I am in full agreement with what she says, and to thank her for her wisdom, and for sharing her experience with others.

Here is the video:

When I was young (immediately after leaving school) I had incredibly low self-esteem and absolutely no confidence in myself, and was full of fear of what the world would throw at me. I have made some humungous mistakes in my life (as we all have, I am sure) and have had to live with the consequences of these, but later understanding of my background and early experiences have helped me to understand that maybe these mistakes were inevitable, and not entirely my own fault. I have come to know that I am who I am, and can only build on that, helped enormously by my Christian faith and an understanding that God has a purpose for my life, and that He has allowed certain things, and will never test me beyond my strength. (Romans 8:28 has been my watchword throughout my Christian walk!)

Confidence in myself grew in my 30s, when I suddenly realised that it really didn’t bother me so much what people thought of me – Jennibellie points out in the video that actually other people are so wrapped up in their own issues that they probably don’t give us a second thought, so our worrying is all castles in the air! My mum used to say this to me when I was younger, and she was right. OK, I’m never going to shine in the fame and fortune stakes, am not genius-standard intellectually, and will never be a wealth-producer, but I am me, a bit of a jack-of-all trades and master of none, but I have gifts and talents specific to myself and it’s up to me to use them to the best of my ability, and ****** the rest!!! Mum always says it’s a good thing we aren’t all the same. She’s right. If we were, there would be too much done in one field, and nothing else would get done at all!

I think artists are particularly susceptible to comparison with others, and being far too self-critical, whether they are in the field of physical and visual arts, or music. I have found singers to be incredibly sensitive in this area – the voice is such a personal thing, as one’s instrument is oneself! I have recent experience with somebody who although very confident in the field of music, exhibits all the signs of lack of confidence in her work as an artist – she is a beginner, and comes over with lots of negative comments about her work and how she doesn’t consider herself to be a “real artist,” and doesn’t think she is creative. She is comparing herself with me, which is all very flattering, but I did my best to encourage her as she embarks on this new area of creativity.

I have often found myself comparing my work with the work of others online, and in every case these people were more experienced than I was, and I found myself wishing I could have come up with such original ideas. “I wish I’d thought of that…” However, discussing one of my pieces recently, I was told how creative and original it was. We do need to look at our own achievements and let them stand alone, and listen to what others say to us about them, and about us as artists too – this can be incredibly encouraging and confidence-building.

One thing I have done often, which Jennibellie suggests on her video, is to look back at my earlier projects and see how I have moved on since those days. This is one reason why I have a blog. It’s such a useful tool! The other day I was reviewing my Youtube videos and felt acutely embarrassed at one of my very early ones, “What’s in Shoshi’s boxes?” I made this small series just after I started what I then called crafting (I now consider myself to be an artist rather than a crafter – many self-confessed crafters, in my opinion, should maybe rebrand themselves likewise!), before I had a dedicated space, and had to get the boxes out and work off my lap, or off the dining room table. Those who follow my activities will know that I am now incredibly blessed with a purpose-built studio, my new ARTHaven, and over the years I have accumulated a large quantity of materials and equipment, and also a lot of experience, and growing confidence along the way. Having watched Jennibellie’s video, I have decided to ignore my recent impulse to delete those embarrassing early videos from my Youtube channel! Maybe if others compare them with more recent ones, they also will be encouraged to press on!

I love how we are all unique, and no original work we do is the same as the work of others. Recently I was hankering after a definitive style which would say “Shoshi” to anyone who saw it, but several people have commented recently that various things were in my style, so even if I can’t see it, perhaps I have developed my own unique style after all!

As I grow in experience and confidence, I have come to realise that given my resources (which I fully understand that not everyone is as fortunate to have available), and given some time thinking, planning and imagining, I can do anything I set my mind to. Ideas for projects that have long remained dormant because I couldn’t think how to achieve them will come to fruition, adding another brick to the construction of my growing confidence in my abilities.

The most important lesson in all this is to “Enjoy the journey”! Life, and art, are never static. As individuals we are never static – we grow and change, with time and changing circumstances, and with experiences that impact us and add another dimension to our creativity. What an adventure it all is!

Life is too short to sell ourselves short by thinking we are not as good as other people. There are many different levels of ability, but it is where we are now that counts, and each step along the journey is a step in the right direction, building on past experience and growing in confidence. Various people have commented under Jennibellie’s video, that the only person we should compare ourselves with, is ourselves.

One thing I have found incredibly uplifting and encouraging is the response of others to the work that I am producing – the joy I can give by making, rather than buying, a gift or card – how valued, loved and important it makes the recipient feel. It is in blessing others that we ourselves are blessed.

 

Recent news

I am not able to participate in the weekly blog hop WOYWW (What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday) at present because of other things going on in my life. My workdesk has backslid into a dumping ground again! Today my hubby and I came to the final farewell celebration as he embarks on retirement. We have both been overwhelmed by everybody’s kindness and appreciation for all that he has done to help people in his long career, and by their generosity in the form of gifts and cards, parties and meals provided, and tears shed. We are both feeling pretty wiped out by the incredibly emotional experience and need a few days’ peace and quiet to adjust our inner compasses and get into a new routine.

We are going away on holiday this coming Friday – our first holiday in four years. Over recent years we have both been very busy dealing with all the problems of having extremely elderly parents – settling Dad into residential care as his dementia progressed until his death early last December, and doing our best to care for Mum who was unable to cope on her own. Getting the three of us moved into more suitable accommodation for us all was the great adventure of last year, and from the New Year I felt it was a fresh start, and a springboard to a new way of life. With retirement, there will be financial adjustments to be made as we will be living on a much reduced income (which makes me very glad that I have invested so much in materials and equipment in the past in my ARTHaven!!) and although my life won’t change much – who said “Wives never retire”? Lol! I shall still be cooking and doing the laundry etc. etc.! – but it will be very different adjusting to having a hubby who is no longer working – he has been working (and very hard) all the years I’ve known him, and I can’t yet get my head round what it will be like!

Here we are, last Sunday, at the penultimate farewell party, with the most gynormous cake I’d ever seen:

In May, my hubby celebrated his 65th birthday, and I my 61st, and also it was our 28th wedding anniversary, so quite apart from his retirement, there’s been a lot to celebrate.

To finish, here is a picture of Phoebe looking opulent on my cushion which I chucked onto the floor last night as I settled on the recliner.

I hope you have found this post helpful. Thank you, Jennibellie, for your words of wisdom, which I think we creative folks all need to hear – we all need a refresher course in attitude management sometimes!

Multi-Pocket Envelope Pouch Template

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have been awaiting permission to upload the UK version of Laura Denison’s Multi-Pocket Envelope Pouch template – she has now kindly granted me that permission, so here it is. It is a super little pouch with lots of pockets for tags and photo mats etc., and I shall definitely be incorporating it into my Tattered Time mini-album.

This is page 1, showing how to fold and construct the main pocket from the envelope. US business envelopes are longer and narrower than our UK ones, and this template is based on the type of reply-paid envelope normally enclosed with a business letter, slightly smaller than the regular A4-type envelope, but without a window. We all get plenty of these, and probably most of them end up in the bin.

Pages 2 and 3 show how to cut pieces from two sheets of A4 paper, to construct the inner pocket.

This 3-page template has now been uploaded to my Skydrive for free download as a pdf, or three separate jpgs. Page 2 will probably not print out properly because most printers won’t print right to the ends, and the template only just fits on a sheet of A4, but the pdf can be used as a cutting guide.

I am having a bad day health-wise today, so am unable to make up this pouch for you at the moment, but I will do so asap so you can see what it looks like. Meanwhile, have a look at Laura’s video and you’ll get the idea.

Tattered Time Mini-Album Part 1–Planning

Yesterday evening I started a very exciting new project – my very first mini-album! This is something I have been planning for such a long time, and although I am in the middle of the Card Factory (which is actually more of a chore than a delight…) I really felt the time had come to make a start. I shall be slotting other things in between, so this will be an ongoing project, like my Fine Art Album and my art journal, and other things that I pick up as the mood takes me.

Let me backtrack to the beginning. It was in September 2011, over a year ago, at the Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts Exhibition, that I saw, and fell in love with, the DCWV “Tattered Time” paper stack and just had to buy it. Ever since then, I have wanted to use it for something but was terrified of messing it up, and every now and then I would get it out and go through it, and stroke it, and put it back on the shelf again! I also did a bit of Youtube research to see what other people did with it, and so the germ of an idea began, to make a mini-album with it, but this has been very much on the back burner since then.

More recently, and particularly since my dad has been deteriorating, I have been thinking about his life, and all the things he did and loved, and looking at the Tattered Time papers again, realised that they expressed so much about him. He has always had a passion for clocks, and has collected and repaired them most of his life. He and I have always been very close, and have shared so much fun over his various interests, and I used to “help” him in the workshop when I was small, watching him work, holding things for him, and learning so much. We shared an interest in typewriters when I began my secretarial course – there are pages relating to this – and of course his major passion for music, which is also represented. These are just a few of the things which will be included in the album.

Since I bought the Tattered Time papers, I have also acquired the Tim Holtz “Lost and Found” and “Crowded Attic” stacks – I have used a few small elements from these, but for the most part, they are intact. There are some elements in these collections which will mix and match quite nicely with the Tattered Time papers.

As I have thought about this, the ideas have been coming in leaps and bounds. Just recently, going through lots of old family photos, I’ve come across so many of Dad in his young days etc. My plan is to make a paper bag album, and to add lots of photos and journaling, and also to make some “mechanical” interactive elements to reflect his love of engineering and all things mechanical.

It’s just my personal opinion, but I have never been a great lover of scrapbooking layouts which incorporate photos and papercrafting – somehow to me the elements don’t mix that well, and if one isn’t careful, it can end up looking rather bitty and messy – there are glorious exceptions, of course, but for the most part it leaves me cold. The Tattered Time papers are so glorious that I really don’t want to cover them up with photos, so my plan is to celebrate the papers, and showcase them to the best of my ability, and to hide the photos and journaling on tags and inserts etc., and make it an interactive experience to look at them.

Over the past few days I’ve been doing some intensive research on Youtube into how to construct these albums, and there are some superb tutorials – also on bindings and closures, and I have now more or less decided on what I want to do. Unfortunately most of these tutorials come from the USA, where they have access to a lot of stuff we just can’t get here in the UK – in particular the bags. I have managed to source some, but of course they are a different size, so I cannot follow the tutorials exactly, as regards measurements, and will have to improvise, but this will make the project that much more my own.

Last year, I made some bag skirts for Christmas gift bags. I ordered several sizes of these bags from Ebay, and the seller made a mistake and sent me far too many. When I contacted him about it, he said it would be more hassle if I sent them back, and told me to keep them, and I have often wondered what I was going to do with them. This evening I decided to use some of the medium sized ones to make this album.

These bags are fairly thick, so I hope they are going to work OK for the album. I had to remove the handles, which are made of twisted paper, and quite attractive, so I thought I would save them, maybe to use as embellishments in other projects.

(They are lying on my new scratch paper – not much on it yet so it looks a bit strange!)

I am not going to give a tutorial on how to make up these bags into an album, because it has already been done very adequately on Youtube. I have decided to follow Kathy Orta’s first-class multi-part Youtube tutorial which she made, using the Tim Holtz “Lost and Found” stack, as she makes full use of the bags and their gussets for an album full of pockets for tags. The first part shows how to deconstruct the bags for the album.

Here are my bags with the gussets prepared:

and showing how the gussets fold up to form pockets.

Most paper bags come with a serrated top edge. In this picture, I am trimming this off, so that the bag measures 11 1/4 in from the bottom, with the gusset folded up. This means the finished dimension of each page will be 11 1/4 in wide and 10 3/16 in high.

I have prepared six bags in this way, which should be sufficient to complete my album.

Watch this space to see how this project progresses. Depending on what else I have to do, and how I am feeling, it may not progress very fast! However, once I get going, there may be no stopping me…

WOYWW 118

Ooops – a day late this week! I always wonder where the week went…

Anyway, this week I’ve been busy catching up with stuff I haven’t had time to do all year. Last week I was tidying my ARTHaven, and I finished this week in time to do a video tour of my ARTHaven, and especially of my new video camera rig which my hubby’s friend made for me – I’ve been using it, but not properly as I hadn’t finished setting it up properly, but this is now done and I’m really thrilled.

Yesterday I did a video tutorial on using Inkylicious Ink Dusters to blend distress inks – nobody’s done anything on Youtube about it so I’m the first! When I’d finished, I gathered most of the stuff I’d used, and lined it up on the table for my WOYWW shot.

You can see all the distress inks I used, the actual Ink Dusters, my heat gun and my tub of clear embossing powder, and the four sample pieces I made. The only thing I didn’t put out was the stamps I used.

I’ve done blog posts on both this video tutorial and the tour of my ARTHaven. Happy viewing! – and happy WOYWW (or T!)!

Tim Holtz DIY Glimmer Mist

I haven't posted for a few days because I've been trying to deal with a backlog of videos I've done - loads of editing required, and not much space on my hard drive! This first one is part of an afternoon I had experimenting with my new Tim Holtz stuff. I decided to follow his Youtube tutorial on making your own glimmer mist with his distress inks and perfect pearls. I really had no idea how this would turn out - but in the end I wasn't too disappointed!

Although my first attempt is a bit blotchy, the colours are lovely, and this technique gives the most gorgeous silky feel to the cheapest of card. I tried doing some on black, which you will see on the video I've done on using Tim's masks (not yet edited) and although it's got a nice shimmery finish and again feels lovely, the colour hasn't shown in the way I wanted, unfortunately.

It seems to be pretty much trial and error, but that's exciting in itself, because you don't know what you're going to end up with!

Youtube Uploading

I've now discovered that hidden in the depths of my free FLV video converter is a whole page of parameters that can be changed, so I've increased the quality all round, and replaced the original video on Youtube with one of better quality - however, it's still not quite as good as the original...

They don't make it easy, particularly for novices, and I'm not exactly a novice where video is concerned (although not an expert, either, lol!) I suppose everybody records video in all sorts of different formats, so it's difficult to have hard and fast guidelines, but wouldn't it be great if Youtube provided a universal converter as a free download, so that everyone could upload their videos easily, and at the best possible quality to match that of the original. There are an awful lot of really dreadful quality clips on Youtube but I suspect the fault lies in the original filming.

Anyway, the program I've got seems to work adequately and it's free, which suits me!!

Pop-Up Card with Piano Keyboard

I've been very busy again - no sooner had I finished the Explosion Box than I had to forge ahead with Dad's birthday card ready for Tuesday. It didn't take me as long as I thought, and I finished it yesterday. Today I've been working on the video, and taking a few photos, and trying to find a way of uploading videos to Youtube without them complaining about a whole lot of stuff that is totally beyond me - if they don't want people to use certain formats etc. they should explain in layman's terms exactly what is required, in my opinion - I was left totally in the dark as to what to do.

I finally discovered that it could be converted to a flash video (.flv) for which I downloaded a free converter. The only trouble is, the resulting quality isn't nearly as good... I suppose it will have to do, though.

Here are some pictures of the card.

This is just after I finished the front:

This is the pop-up keyboard inside, which also shows the music - it is the piano version of "Happy Birthday" and I inserted "Dad" into the relevant bit!

Here's a closer view of the pop-up - you can also see the music a bit more clearly on this one:

The next two pictures are of a side-view of the pop-up, showing how the cutting and folding works, and what happens when you close the card.

Here are a couple of photos which show the card almost finished - all I had to do at this stage was add the final 3-D elements.

These pictures show the inside with the floating music notes just after I'd made them:

Finally, here are the pictures of the completed card:

Now, here is the video. I decided this time to video the work in progress. It did make for some difficulties, because each step took me quite a while, and I was concerned about the light going before I'd finished, but it was OK in the end.



Here is the template for the keyboard pop-up. I made it to fit inside a folded A5 card, i.e. final size A6, which is a bit small, and it made it pretty fiddly to make. I'd suggest making it final size A5. I've saved this template as a .jpg, so you can paste it and enlarge it to whatever size you like. You can use your photo editor or desk-top publisher to substitute the name in the Happy Birthday music. I have made the fold lines on the black keys quite thick so they show up when printed. If they show on the finished project, simply go over them with a black felt pen.

I am hoping to go over on Tuesday and see Dad on his birthday. I hope he enjoys his card!