Aloha! HAWAII

 Take a piece of driftwood and with some damp wavewashed beach sand as your canvas, write
ALOHA!

Once again, my ambitions exceeded my capabilities, but it was fun trying!

At this stage I don't have any alphabet software for my embroidery machine, so I wrote "Aloha" with a marking pencil then satin stitched the outline.
I struck a problem when it came to adding the shading caused by the stick digging into the damp sand...., so I attempted to remedy this by hand stitching small straight  stitches around the letters.
In the first card I laid down a couple of silk petals from a broken lei, then added some metallic flower sequins.
The brightly striped fabric represents a beach towel and I made a pair of thongs (flip-flops  I think my American friends call them??)
Some small beads from an old necklace, and a couple of charms completed the beach atmosphere.

The second and third cards also shared the beige batik for a sandy beach.

Unfortunately, I got the" bright" idea of grating some Inktense sticks onto the fabric and moistening the result.
I should have stuck to my original thought of gluing beach sand to the surface, but I was worried about how Customs would react to that, so gave it a miss.

On the second and third cards I couched down some shaggy knitting yarn to represent seaweed on the beach, and if  you look closely you will find shells, the odd fish or dolphin
and even a turtle.
I have represented the beaches in a creamy beige shade, hopefully like the sands of Waikiki, but thinking back to a very short visit in 1979, I remember walking on a beach with nearly black sand and sloping very steeply from the beach to the water.....
Is my memory playing tricks, or have I remembered correctly?