Dear Friends,
I wanted to report the status of the cards and answer a couple of questions that have been posed to me.
First, the printing of the cards for the band members went off without a hitch. Printing Leonard's card was another matter. Groupcards.com advertises that they handle cards with thousands of pages. Leonard's card was about 250 pages. The program crashed on me at least three times while I was moving posts. I know I lost one post and on two other posts the text was preserved but the attached photos were lost. I am sorry about that. I didn't catch the name of the person whose post disappeared before it was gone.
When it came time to print Leonard's card, it was a nightmare. The program would not respond properly and after about four days and at least 25 attempts at trying to produce the pdf file for printing, we had only successfully printed about the last 30 pages of the card and the first 220 pages were lost to us. Repeated attempts to contact customer service were met only with instructions to try Firefox instead, which we did, to no avail. We also went to various other locations and other people to attempt to find a better internet connection and nothing worked. As a last resort, I was going to let groupcards print up the card in hopes that once they weren't able to do it, they would take our requests for help seriously. So I put up the additional monies and suddenly we got their attention. Shame on them for holding our card hostage for more money.
Now that's the bad news, the wonderful news is this -- Thanks to Grace (Misty Marie), we have beautifully printed cards for the band members and Leonard. Though we were four days past the deadline when Grace thought she could get it done, once we had the pdf file she put her entire life on hold and worked tirelessly to get Leonard's card printed. All thanks for the success of this project goes to her. She did an amazing job and her designs and ideas have made these thank you cards works of art.
All the cards are printed on buff-colored parchment paper. The pages were bound into a book format using black ribbon. The cards/booklets are 8 x 8 with wide margins so they have the look and feel of a high quality handmade book from another century.
Grace designed amazing covers for the cards. For the band she searched through hundreds of photos to find just the right one of each person. She printed the photo on heavier stock buff-colored paper. Then over the top of that she placed a sheet of clear vellum with a design of musical notes that appear to be moving in a circle. When the vellum is over the cover, the band member's photo shows through the circle of notes. These covers are just gorgeous.
For Leonard's card, Grace printed a beatiful photo of him on the buff-colored heavier stock paper. She placed a vellum sheet over that with an exquisite line design in gold, grays and black thereby framing Leonard's face when the vellum is over the photo. It is just stunning. And thanks to all of you, Leonard's card is nearly an inch thick!
Now if this were not enough, Grace designed special gifts boxes to put our thank you cards in for presentation. They are black boxes with a lovely black bow and white ribbon and a little notecard. Grace took some great pictures to give you a better idea of how the cards look and also to see the sentiments and special touches that she added. All Hail Grace!
As for the presentation, details are still to be worked out. However, I did speak with Robert Kory a couple of weekends ago and he indicated that Vegas is going to be especially hectic for everyone. There will be lots of family members there and security is going to be extra tight. So, we will hold our breath and hope for the best. At the very least, I know we can get this card into Robert Kory's hands and Robert will see to it that Leonard gets it after he is back in LA with more time to read each and every entry.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Grace who is amazingly talented, patient, diligent, calm and giving. Thank you to dear Leslie (mutti), who corrected everyone's typos. Thank you to all those who offered a kind word of support about this idea, most especially Avi and Sam. And a big thank you to all those who signed the card and told Leonard how much you love him and his work. You are the thank you gift to Leonard.
BAND CARD
photo underneath vellum:
inside cover pages of band card:
the messages:
back cover:
LEONARD'S CARD
photo underneath vellum:
inside cover pages:
the messages:
inside back cover:
back cover without vellum:
back cover with vellum cover:
card in presentation box:
