Pebble painting

For someone who hails from India, some things are just taken for granted. Sandy beaches are among them. Most places you decide to holiday in, there will be surely a rendezvous with the sun and the sand. Making sand-castles, wearing graffiti glares and sexy swimwear, soaking in the sun, writing names and drawing in the sand - its all there! 

And cut to UK. Beaches, huh? Naah. Even if you find them, you can't get into the water, they are freezing cold all through the year. Sand? Oh no, you don't even have those most of the times! Who would have imagined you need to adjust to that! Most beaches are the pebble beach kinds and there are extremely few sandy beaches. So, it is quite a dull proposition to holiday on a beach here. No sand, no dunking in the water. :-(

Now since we have to make peace with this situation, we went about collecting pebbles on the one beach that we had been to, which thankfully was also a sandy one! We picked up a whole bag of flat pebbles and brought them home, as usual, not knowing what to do with them. And one day, we sat to colour them in metallic paint.

They looked really nice, but we din know again what to do with them. Then, one day filled with boredom, we sat to draw on them. We did not use any water colours or a paint brush though, we used indelible marker pens.  I had a go first, and this is the random stuff that I came up with -

On the back side, this is what A did -

Can you recognise her hedgehog? :-)

We bought a new book in our library, called Peter's Pebbles, where the boy in the story loved to paint different animals and birds on his pebbles. You can read our review of the book here, in my other blog dedicated to Children's picture books- My Tiny Caterpillar. Interestingly, the book is my entry for the alphabet today on the A to Z Blogging Challenge.

We took inspiration from the book and decided to do some animals of our own and some scenic pictures too!

The elephant and the crocodile (the green thing with bloody jaws, LoL )  are A's creation! :-) The others, I'm not even going to bother telling you, it wouldn't matter because you anyway can't make them out from my laughable drawings!

I also attempted a zebra! Check out my traditional Tamil 'kolam'  and A's picture of a sunny day out!

Its a fun activity and I'm sure a very popular one too. Next time, do pick up flat, shapely pebbles for your little one when you see them lying around on a beach!