Only Natural

These are for another of Helli's swaps. For this one all ATCs need to be made using only natural items, including the colours. (I did ask if I was allowed to use inks or paints but have been banned!)

The one one the left was the simplest of the three. This one was made with a coffee background, (I made some extremely strong coffee and spritzed it onto the card with a squirty spray then painted a coffee border on it), plant fibres, undyed linen, jute mesh, shells, a strip of bark (at the bottom), a skeleton leaf and a wooden disc with the letter N painted on it using coffee.

For the second one I again used a coffee background as before but this time I also painted swirls on it using coffee. I've also used a square of leather, a shell, tiny pebbles, a strip of hessian, a bay leaf and another wooden disc with the N painted in coffee. This one has a bit of a strange smell - coffee and bay leaves anyone?

For the third one I wanted a bit of colour so had to have a think about what I could use that was natural. I had some cherries in the fridge, so I decided on cherry juice (and yes, I ate the cherries after I squeezed them and I've now got pink fingernails that won't come clean). I started off by doing the background. I just dipped the card in the cherry juice to start with and dried it with the heat gun, but I wasn't happy with the way the cherry juice had distributed so I gave it a spritz of water and dried it again with the heat gun. I kept on doing this until I had a nice distressed background that I was happy with and then painted on a cherry juice border. I think it looks quite effective as there are lots of different shades of pink and purple and also some brown where the cherry juice has cooked with the heat from the heat gun. I then dyed all the bits I was going to put on, also using the cherry juice. I think it's quite interesting that the different bits have all turned out different colours even though I used the same juice. On this one I've used plant fibres, jute mesh, shells, bark, a skeleton leaf and a wooden disk, all coloured with the cherry juice. I couldn't get a strong enough concentration of cherry juice to paint the N in it so I've used coffee again for that. Unfortunately instead of smelling of cherries it smells of the silicone glue that I've filled the shells with to protect them from breaking in the post - bleh!