Ricola Wrapper Nesting Doll ATCs

 

The wrappers on Ricola candies are almost too pretty to throw away. The little delicate flowers on the original flavor remind me of edelweiss and the Sound of Music. The cherries on the cherry flavored Ricola are even more striking. So, I started saving them and incorporating them into my ATCs.

When Paper Traders yahoo group announced a nesting doll swap, it seemed a perfect fit for me. I love dolls, especially traditional Russian nesting dolls. I set about cutting and pasting to create a unique and original design.

I combined an original design of my own, a tile design (you can see the fabric I made from my tile design here) with some gingham paper and a zetti-ish diamond pattern.

The cherry Ricola wrapper had a nice color and feel to it, so I made sure to use it in the biggest doll and also in the background, near the hidden quote.

Here are links to some of my other ATCs than incorporate the Ricola wrappers:
Splatter House ATCs
and
Fly Free ATC

Splatter-Technique House-Shaped ATCs

The PaperTraders Yahoo trade group never seems to run out of good ideas and new ideas. One of their newest challenges was to make house-shaped ATCs using the splatter technique. For a sloppy artist like me who is often making splattery messes, it seemed a natural fit.

Splattering on purpose instead of accidentally had me going back to my early FIT days when I was studying Textile Design, and I took a class called "Painted Wovens." We had to paint very precise stripes, then, at a perfect 90 degree angle, splatter areas carefully to create the same visual effect as a woven plaid would.

I rummaged around in my bin of brushes, and found that--luckily--I still had my Lactona brand toothbrush, which creates a very delicate splatter.

I splattered a variety of papers, including vintage magazine print, glossy fashion magazines, and painted watercolor paper.

I went online and found some cute houses, shrunk them to 2.5" x 3.5", and cut them to use the parts as templates. Next, I cut pieces of the splattered paper and fiddled with them until I got an arrangement I liked. the details were added with white and colored pens, cherry Ricola wrappers were cut to give the little red flowers, and on some I used a mini-brad as a doorknob. I also added, for visual interest, some inspirational words that had been printed on Avery clear mailing labels and some dots, made by punching out little circles of splattered paper.

I made five, kept two (usually I make extra, then keep my very favorite and the one that I think is the worst), and have three ready to trade once the partners are announced.

Fly Free ATC

What color is dew? Like rain, it is really clear, but when it sits on the grass in the early morning, it often seems to be a pale yellow-green. With that color in mind for the June Arts in the Cards ATC exchange, I started gathering yellow-green paints, fabric and papers. I’m still enthralled with tea bags, so I gathered used, empty, dry bags from my husband’s daily green tea. I adhered them to my ATC base with PPA (perfect paper adhesive). I have been collecting pretty Ricola wrappers for a while, so I thought the flowery part of the wrapper would hint at a garden. On top of the Ricola wrapper, I cut strips of teabags that I had embossed a white scroll design, thinking it would suggest a garden fence. Below the flowers, I glued strips of green soy batik that I made from an old shirt of my husband’s. It looked naked at the top, so I added more green with Derwent blocks, and then stamped, with green acrylic, some OM symbols. They were too pale, so I covered them with a small vintage image of a butterfly that I found on the Graphics Fairy blog. http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ In Photoshop, I added the words fly free at the top and papillon at the bottom. For more texture I stitched the butterfly to the card, and finished the edges with Ranger Distress Ink in a color called Vintage Photo.