At this time of year, chocolates are bought and the amount of wrappers thrown in the bin can mount up. At a recent training event I asked the participants to save their sweetie wrappers and we added them to a transparent tarp.

It was a random choice of designs. I didn’t ask anyone to do anything specific. I was interested to see how different types of transparent tape worked on the tarp… some was translucent, some clear, some with thread running through. I’ve been experimenting a lot with tarps recently and this was another idea I wanted to explore.

The dark shadows on the tarp are made by the tin foil that was flattened and rubbed smooth. If you take photos underneath a transparent tarp, it works very much in a similar way to a light box. In the first photo you can see that depending on how you look at the tarp and in what conditions, the coloured sweetie wrappers and foil do change in appearance. This photo was taken on a frosty morning.

I think there’s a lot more possibilities to explore with scrap pieces of cellophane. This is just for starters. 🙂

Update: Apparently Quality Street cellophane wrappers are biodegradable… if so, that’s encouraging news too.

This blog post was originally published in December 2019.