2. You'll never have that feeling of pride that comes with truly mastering something.

3. You won't learn to confront your present technical limitations and overcome them. This will mean that you'll learn a lot of new things but your overall level of playing won't become elevated.

4. You'll know about 1007 bits of songs, but if someone asks you to play a song from start to finish, you can't.

Not a pretty picture is it? So what are some things that you can do about it? Here are a few ideas…

1.When learning a new lick or exercise, set a speed goal. Keep practicing lick/exercise until speed goal has been reached. Realise that this can sometimes take weeks, months (or even years!).

2. Learn to enjoy using your self-discipline. Feel proud about yourself every time you follow through and master something.

3. Use visualization. See yourself in your mind's eye becoming a guitar virtuoso. This will help keep you motivated and enthusiastic!

4. Make a commitment to completion. With everything you learn, refuse to quit. Keep working on it until it has been mastered.

I guarantee that if you learn to tap into your self-discipline your guitar playing will improve at an accelerated rate! Of course, if you want to sit on couch watching TV and eating bags of potato chips,dreaming about one day becoming an awesome guitarist, that's cool also!

Copyright 2005 by Craig Bassett. All Rights Reserved.

Craig Bassett (The Guitar Solutions Expert)is a professional guitarist, guitar tutor and author living in Auckland, New Zealand.

Also, you can use a computer graphics package to blend together two or three images for your final silhouette shape. Be sure to adjust size of final image to make it correct size for painting surface you have chosen, and print it out. As this is a gift you can make it whatever size you choose.

Once you have painted or found a suitable background, then trace around outside edge of image for your silhouette shape. Use carbon paper for this.

The silhouette shape can be painted in using acrylic paints – don’t make paint too thin though! Another alternative is to use a permanent marker, not a normal marker as it will fade over time, and that would be disappointing for person receiving gift.

Silhouettes look very effective and traditional in black. However you could use a darker shade of one of colors in background for an alternative look. For example if background was a pale green silhouette could be in a dark green. This all adds to uniqueness of your gift.

If you are using a colored card it will be better to use a permanent marker as water in paint may cause card surface to buckle.

Fill in silhouette shape and leave to dry. Then frame silhouette picture.

**A distinctive gift for a special person.**

This type of personalized gift is always appreciated and shows that you have put some thought, time and effort into present.

Another major benefit is that no one else will be giving exactly same gift!

This is an excellent technique if you can’t find a suitable card. You can make your own special card. It is most effective if you choose a very simple shape for silhouette when using this method in card making. Cards are generally a lot smaller and look best when you use less detailed shapes.

Use this system and say goodbye to gift buying problems for that hard to please someone.