Postcard......July was hot...........

and we spent most of our free time on the beach, often with the grandchildren, Maisie 6 and Joe 5. We bought them inflatable plastic surfboards. These surfboards were a huge success, they just wouldn't stay out of the water. We made them wear armbands, in case they went too far out and fell off. (The armbands are not 'life preservers' but they do make them more visible and give you a chance to get to them). Instead of using the inflatables as surfboards, they lay across them and kicked out with their legs. They got up to quite a speed, and with the coloured inflatables, plus the armbands, they looked like brightly coloured insects whizzing across the top of the water.

I wanted to be sure I remembered, so I made a postcard! Here it is,
entitled 'Joe's Heroic Rescue'

(click on photo for bigger image)

Maisie was busy kicking away, and when she looked up, she found herself face to face with a seagull! She looked around, discovered she could no longer touch the bottom and realised she had gone too far out. She started shouting but that quickly turned to crying and Joe immediately launched himself out on a rescue mission. His little legs go really fast and he soon reached his sister and began to push her back in with his own inflatable. They were quite safe because there is a ring of rocks around that part of the beach, but the water was very cold and they had both been in for quite a while and Maisie was beginning to panic, so the end result was that poor long-suffering Grandad had to jump in and push them both to shore.

The postcard was about children, so I wanted a simple, childish style. The original sketch is in the background, with two versions of the postcard.

Both postcards are on craft vilene (pellon). The top one was sunprinted with silk paints. I cut out the shapes of the rocks and the children in paper, laid them in position on the painted vilene and put it oustide in the sun. Then I coloured it in with water colour dyes and outlined with a fine tipped permanent marker. The bottom one was coloured with water colour dyes and outlined with a fine tipped permanent marker, then I outlined the figure in the foreground with whipped back stitch in fine crochet cotton.