My friend Dan turned 31 on Sunday.
He had a lovely party on Saturday night, mostly Shanty people, so we sang and played instruments for 4 or 5 hours.
As is my wont when i have the time I made him a book as a birthday gift, as a kind of card. This time 31 pages.
I used envelopes Avril gave me recently (what can you do with envelopes? she asked).
In the same vein the Envelope Series).
Interesting and intelligent people have mentioned to me that they are stumped when it comes to what to write in a birthday card, other than “happy birthday”, so I set them a task: to write something they liked about Dan on a card, and then insert it into the book.
What it seemed to do was allow them privacy: I saw no one rifling through the other people’s words.
I am yet to hear how Dan liked it, but i hope it made him feel loved, because he certainly is!
To stick the envelopes together I made some navy blue bands which ran along the back of the concertina. It still seemed under-decorated, so I found my fleur-de-lys stamp and my Adirondack Espresso coloured stamp pad and put that on the front (and back).
