Piano!

Today I have proof that making mindless embellishments can spark my creativity when mojo seems to be missing.  I've realized that I tend to use my die cuts more if I make them ahead, so when mojo disappears, I get out my cutting dies and get to work.  Today I found myself using a set of musical dies from Paper Discovery called Lost in Music - Musical Panels.  I have often used the music notes on a card that says something like "just a note", so having a bunch of them on hand is helpful.  And, while I have used quite a few of those notes since I got the dies, I've never actually used the piano keyboard.  So, I decided to cut out the piano keyboard and put it together before cutting out a bunch of the music notes for my stash.

The piano turned out pretty good, but before I put it in my stash, I die cut the music notes to go with it.

After cutting out the music notes, I found myself staring at the "leftovers".  I had cut the panel of notes twice side by side out of black card stock.  As I looked at those scraps I realized what a pretty background it would make!  I decided to trim it up and see what I could do with it - and that is where this card came from.

The background panel and keyboard both were approximately 6" wide.  I thought about using them on a 4" x 6" card, but felt that too much of the background panel would be hidden if I only had 4" to play with.  So, I decided to use a 5 x 7 card base.  I thought about cutting it down to 5" x 6", but didn't like the resulting proportions, so left it at 5 x 7 figuring I'd create some sort of border on either side.  

I knew I wanted to wrap a red ribbon between the keyboard & the rest of the background before gluing it all down, but it was a  bit tricky since the background panel wasn't 5" tall.  I ended up gluing the keyboard to a portion of the background first - making sure the combo came out to exactly 5" tall and the sides were even.  This was made much easier by using my new glue press.  That tool enables such a fine line of glue that I could put glue on the lower part of the background panel and line up the piano keyboard on top with both on top of the card for sizing purposes - all without the panel sticking to the card front!!!  Once the two pieces were glued together, it was a simple thing to wrap the ribbon where I wanted it.  I taped the ribbon to the back of the panel to hold it taut before gluing the whole thing in place.  (Once again that glue press came in handy to make sure all little pieces were glued down with out making a gluey mess that would be seen through the die cut holes in the background.)

I went looking for red to match my ribbon to create a border on the sides.  That was harder than it should have been!  I ended up using some sticky-backed vinyl from my stash - cut to fit as you see on either side of the focal - leaving a narrow white border between it and the keyboard/panel.

For a finishing touch, I tried lots of things over the background panel, but they just didn't look right and took away from the beauty of the panel.  So, I settled on a Hunkydory printed greeting tag.  After adding that, I added a little ribbon bow and my card front was done.

Inside:

I had originally created the banner, using red Dazzles stickers adhered to a white mat, for the front of this card, but it just didn't look good against the background.  I could have used a black strip for backdrop like I did here, but would have covered up a bunch of that pretty background.  I decided that rather than let all that fussy cutting of the mat go to waste, I'd use it on the inside on a black border strip.  I will probably go back and scatter a few musical notes on the inside of the card after I decide who will receive this card and how much room I need for stamped sentiment and/or handwritten note.  For now, my mojo's back and it feels good!  (Though unfortunately, my time for crafting is up for now!)