Those were the days…...

…or were they?

My parents used to save for a week's holiday each year when my brother and I were children. We always went to the East coast, usually in Lincolnshire and sometimes in Yorkshire - at least until I was about eleven - from then we used to go to Great Yarmouth each year (with the exception of one, when we travelled across the Pennines to Blackpool for the rainiest of holidays we ever had!)
The attraction was the entertainment - it was the beginning of the pop era and the time of family entertainment shows and Great Yarmouth had something for every night of the week!
At that time most big seaside resorts in England had an outdoor entertainment area too - at Great Yarmouth it was the Marina!

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when the front cover of an Artfund catalogue had an image on the front that I just knew I would use!

It was taken by Tony Ray-Jones who died when he was only 31 years old. He made a photographic record of England at Leisure in the 60's. I hope to go and see more of his work in the School holidays with our grandchildren!
My Mum and Dad liked this place a lot - I think it was quite inexpensive to get in and they put on a variety of events, some were not at all the kind of thing pre-teens/teens would enjoy - organ playing, sing-a-longs, beauty contests…you get the picture! We used to long for the evenings when pop stars would entertain us all!
My page started with a streakily brushed page using blue and white paint - sorry can't remember which paints I used! 

I stamped some seagulls and coloured them with a sharpie pen and added some ink through a stencil plus a little bit of white paint spattering. The sun was stamped onto deli paper and painted on the back.

I found the beauty contest photo on the internet, not sure which town it was in though. 
The papers to mount the photos and the deck chairs were from a freebie booklet of papers that came with a magazine - there were only three chairs so I cut them to make a row!
The 'sea' was some left over in my scrap box - added some white pen and a stamped sign to show where my brother and I would rather have been! There is also a time bit of splattery tissue there too!

This is of course for Art Journal Journey's theme Summertime Love - Elizabeth's brilliant choice this month!
As I was looking at this I changed my mind about my choice of words and switched them around! 

Thanks for looking, Chris