@LilyandBaron :yes:
Agreed! Those are beautiful & unique!
For my agingeyesighted Self, I’d just make the letters a darker/brighter/more contrasting shade than the greenery.
But if they work for you, Enjoy!
And re: your idea of selling them, offer color options & I bet they will fly off your site 
You could do a very clear, simple, easy to read font with stuff growing on it.
ie; https://www.fontsc.com/font/jf-jungle-rock
Inspirations;
https://www.fontsc.com/font/tag/plants
Thanks! I do think black showed up better - I did a trial run painting two of the stencil cut outs, but the black overpowered the botanical print. And if the gold just doesn’t work when put up, or as my eyes start failing me, I can easily paint them darker:) But I should sort of know which letters are where, right? Lol. It was fun! I do wish I had time to do more - maybe when I retire, this is my retirement gig to fund the horse addiction:)
Beautiful and so creative! I wouldn’t wait until retirement, I’d start start selling them now.
Beautiful letters lilyandbaron. I love the idea of making them different and prettier.
Maybe the letters should be brown and barky ?
What a fun idea! Also, I will now be constantly on the alert for an opportunity to work “dressage ninja” into a conversation. :yes:
It certainly would end the confusion when an instructor is calling for a movement at Vee, which is misinterpreted as Cee or BEE, not to mention Pee, or Gee, or Dee.:lol::lol:
I’ve seen ones like this, they’re common at RDA centres
https://www.sportsmark.co.uk/p/522/personalised-large-dressage-markers-with-animals
If you want darker letter maybe try painting the letters dark green, but leave a gold border to offset them from the greenery.
Nice job!
I love it!! You could even just outline the letters a bit bolder, that would make the letters stand out a bit more without overpowering the botanicals behind them.
I teach piano. I teach my adult beginners the same neumonic device for remembering the note names of the keys as I do the little kids. The group of 2 black keys is the Dog House. The group of 3 black keys, Grandma’s house. The Dog (D) lives inside the doghouse between the black keys. His neighbor to the left is Cat ©. His neighbor to the right is elephant (E). Because poor grandma has an elephant living in the yard, she has a front porch (F) to keep the elephant out of her house. And so on…
No one ever forgets the key names. Beats the heck outta those stupid stickers people used to put on the keys in the old days.
Tortuous.
Eh, it’s pretty obvious looking at the keyboard. I agree it’s Byzantine when described in writing. Most of my students had the key names under control by lesson 3 whereas I would get transfer students that had no clue even after a couple years of lessons. A very wise 6yo also pointed out to me that the keys start on A. I knew this, of course. But it never occurred to me, if that makes sense. In a pinch, one could count all the way up from the bottom of the keyboard to find the letter name of the key you were unsure of.
What’s wrong with just memorizing them like in the really old days?
I still remember the first time I saw a guitar piece in tablature instead of, well, just music. Freaked me out. Still does!
Good lord, just teach them where A is and then it’s pretty dang easy, no? Sharp is to the right, flat is to the left. If they can’t see or understand the pattern and subsequent names of the keys after a couple years (or really after like… a month with a learner book), they aren’t cut out for sheet music and should learn to play by ear - some of the best musicians are in that category, so it isn’t a dig.
Lordie, I can tell a lot of you don’t play the piano!! No, it’s not that simple. I’m talking about teaching them to find the correlating keys on the keyboard itself. A lot of people have trouble with that. Especially because the high contrast blck/white keys give people depth perseption issues. I didn’t invent the style of teaching that uses the black keys to orient the player on the keyboard. Franz Liszt did. And if it worked for him…
There are 7 or 8 octaves of each letter name on the keyboard. The first thing you must do as a piano teacher is help the student see the pattern of the keyboard. Each occurance of a given note (A, for example) is notated differently in written sheet music. So, each of the 7 A’s has it’s own symbol in written music. Because the piano has so many notes, we use a grand staff where both the treble and bass clef are read simultaneously. For notes at the upper and lower extremes, ledger lines are used to extend the staves up or down. When you’re reading along and see a note 5+ ledger lines below the staff (not uncommon in condensed orchestra scores for opera) chances are even a professional concert player is going to have to stop and count ledger lines and them write the note name next to it in the score. Now, I can make a good guess what the note might be on the fly if necessary thanks to a technique called intervalic reading. But for a piece I’m learning for my repertoire where it must be 100% perfect, I’m going to count, because it could make a difference in the voicing of the chord.
They ARE memorizing them. I’m just making it a whole lot easier for them by giving them visual cues by helping them see the pattern of the keys on the keyboard. When they first come in I’m not trying to teach them the notes on the page yet. Just how to find every instance of the notes A-G on the key board to a level of fluency that they could wake up at 3am, shuffle to the piano, and find all the E’s with their eyes half closed. They have to be able to see the patterns that connect the keys, much like a hunter has to be able to find the related line between jumps. I shamelessly ripped the idea off from Franz Liszt. He taught the # and b scales by black key groupings. Who am I to argue with Liszt? Lol
Why do I do this? 1) traditional instruction methods are weak at producing players who are secure in their key signatures. It took me a couple years to go back and teach myself to play in a chord-based way on the piano like I always could on the guitar. Vital to a voice teacher because I often have to sight-reading a piece of music without screwing up while at the same time listening to a singer and making mental notes on feedback. 2) It takes YEARS to be able to read piano music above a novice level fluently. Being able to orient yourself on the keyboard 100% accurately makes the whole reading process quicker and less painful because you are going to be naturally capable of intervalic reading. Most concert piano pieces are memorized because it’s not possible for the human eye to follow the notes on the page because we piano players are special and like a clef for each hand 
anyway, now that I totally derailed OP’s thread - OP, I love your letters! I have no imagination whatsoever in that area and would’ve never occurred to me to make a background!
Maybe dressage should adopt the Phonetic Alphabet 
I’ve played the piano for about 23 years. Have been to nashville to assist with a friend’s recording, played the silly hymns in church (not religious, so that was fun), accompanied for many choirs, have an inherited baby grand at home. I can play by ear, and I can read sheet music extremely quickly. Favorite to play is Vivaldi. Favorite current is Einaudi. I don’t play as much as I should anymore, as I’m always crunched for time.
It goes ABCDEFG ABCDEFG over and over again. There is a pattern to the black keys that allows you to orient where you are on the white keys. Why one would need to orient themselves to any more than ONE of the white keys totally escapes my mind. Saying this letter is left and this letter is right is ridiculous because it’s alphabetical. The group of two black keys, go down a half step from the one on the left and voila that’s C - and from there, you are within hands reach of where you wanted to be.
Reading sheet music is a totally different animal. Beginners don’t need to know all the instances of A on the keyboard - they’re always playing a melody around middle C, in C major. By the time they exercise the entire keyboard, they should have already learned the pattern by heart/memory/feel.
Talking about dogs and cats and houses and this this way and that that way. Oi. My brain is bleeding. But hey, if it works for you and yours…
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