I started with gathering my materials. A box with coloured papers and markers to colour paper in the right shade.
The idea of drawing with just the scissors appealed to me. But I do need to focus so I drew some shapes within the theme I have been working on for the past month in TDL.

 

The shapes that I drew with my markers:

 

Cutting and playing with the sea inspired shapes. This composition doesn't feel right at the moment. I think it is the scale of some of the motifs that I need to adjust. I might do this in the software though.

 

The next step is to take it into the computer and vectorise the motifs. I will be doing this later in the week.

For this project I took the photo of the layout into Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator. Using the Pen Tool I drew the shapes quickly and added colour to the shapes.

The next step was adjusting the layout. Thanks to the fact that the shapes were vector, it was quite easy to adjust the scale of some of the shapes and make them fit in.
Then I started to play with different backgrounds.

Here are some options that I considered:

 

And even a muddy brown background. I must admit that it looked much better in Affinity! :-)

The last step was adding the details, the markings.

 

I might adjust the colours of the shapes and the backgrounds later on again. I am never sure of the colours that I use.

Update.
When working on a pattern I felt that I needed less shapes and threw a lot away. Some elements were duplicated to fill up the open spaces more nicely.

Here is what I did come up with:

 

 

I loved playing with the collage and editing it on the computer. And I see myself adjusting the colours even more. Make them more suitable for children.
Thank you for the class! This was absolutely fun!