Day 7

One week down! See how fast it goes? Today, make a stencil and use it in your work.

As a child, my creative artistic mom was always coming up with new crafts for my sisters and I to indulge in. Most of the time they revolved around the upcoming holiday or someone’s birthday. One day for my birthday we made these beautiful beach bags, with puff paint outlining the beautiful red peaks of the beach umbrella. On the reverse side a beautiful blue dolphin and a smiley yellow sun. I loved this bag and filled it every summer with the latest Little House on the Prairie or Babysitters Club book, goggles, and beach towel and carried it down to the sandy shores of the OBX. A few years after I made it, just when the colors were beginning to fade, the puff paint was starting to crack, and the sand had made the canvas fabric soft, my family and I were down around Pea Island driving along the beaches and playing in the dark sand when the tide came up and washed this bag and all of its belongs away. I was too young at this point to realize the change in the tides and had carelessly threw my bag down in the sand. I was so upset. The beautiful beach bag was one of a kind, really. It could never be replaced. Ever!

A few years later, when I had forgotten about this bag, my older sister Layne gave me a birthday present, and as I ripped open the paper and peered inside, there was the bag. What? How could it be? As I pulled it out and admired the design, I noticed subtle differences. The blue a little bit brighter, the handles a tad longer, the umbrella multicolors. She had made me a new bag. That summer I sported that thing like it was a new prada, but when the summer faded into fall I place the bag away and the next year when I turned 13, I replaced it with an old Jansport. I had gotten too old for the dolphins and umbrellas and beach scene, but the bag stayed in a box until I found it last year. Maybe when Ansley, my niece gets older I can pass the beautiful handmade beach bag down to her and she will cherish it as much as I did.