ArtPlay Palette Plage (solid, transfers, brushes, bottle-from the bonus files when you purchase the collection)
SeaSprinklez No.3 (all of the elements except for the bottle)
Process...
I started with solid no.2 and used transfer no.2 as a mask for the photo (royalty free from Pixabay). I opened the .psd for the multimedia element that is part of the bonus files for APP Plage and moved the bottle to my page. I enlarged it A LOT, then filled it with seashells from the new sea sprinklez. Added some brushes and transfers, then added the title and journaling. True story.
Journaling: When I was 5 and Erin was 3, we had a beach day with our parents and grandparents. There were probably cousins, too, but this story isn’t about them. I remember being told to look at the umbrella so we could find our spot should the need arise. To my 5 year old eyes, the umbrella was huge and looked like a rainbow. Easy to remember. At some point, I convinced Erin that we should search for shells for the glass fish my grandmother kept in her bathroom. It had a wide open mouth with a big belly and my grandmother fed it tiny seashells.
We set off with our pail determined to find tiny shells to feed to the fish. No one noticed us leave which, looking back, was highly unusual given my mother’s constant vigilance when it came to her kids. I’m not sure how long we were gone, but long enough to cause panic among the adults. I guess I also began to feel uneasy because I started looking for the rainbow umbrella. Unfortunately, it now seemed everyone had a rainbow umbrella. I remember taking my sister’s hand and slowly walking along the shoreline looking for something or someone familiar (we lived in the era of stranger danger, so I knew I couldn’t ask just anyone for help). We were hot, tired, and lost. After what seemed an eternity, I looked up and there was my grandmother running toward us with a lifeguard in tow. They were preparing to start a water search. I don’t know who was more relieved, her or me. She took the two of us back to our spot on the sand, under our rainbow umbrella, and we didn’t move off the blanket for the rest of the day.
A week or two later, my grandmother produced the pail with our shells and let us feed them into the belly of the fish.
