Upcycling a Treasure Trove, Saving the Environment

Every now and then, it's an exciting challenge to work with new material, something unfamiliar or unusual that kicks up your creative spark and leads you down some new paths. Over the next few posts, I'm going to share my adventures in using upcycled materials in my jewelry.

Last fall, I went to a local event held twice a year, created with the mission to keep material out of the landfill. It's a treasure trove of designer samples, construction materials, and miscellaneous stuff, all free for the taking. Artists, creators, teachers, and anyone who's curious enough to walk in can walk out with as much as their arms (or bags and carts) can carry.

It. is. AWESOME.

This was the second time I had gone. This time, my target was fabrics and trims that could be repurposed into jewelry. Holy crap, y'all, I found the mother lode. Books and books and books of designer trim samples. Tassels and gimp and ribbon trim. Faux leather in every finish and color you could imagine. I was absolutely giddy.

I got five big tote bags crammed full of sample books.
If I could have carried a bag with my teeth, I'd have gotten more.

Each trim sample book had at least three panels full of goodies like this:

I spent a full afternoon carefully removing each sample from the books - they were securely glued to the pages, intended to stand up to lots of wear and tear as a designer used them in consultations with clients. Those babies were SECURE. I sacrificed several fingernails to the process. 

Totally worth it. This is a little bit of the final result, sorted and bagged by type in a futile attempt to organize it...

Right?!? And that's not all - there were two books full of fabulous faux leather samples, perfect for backing bead embroidery projects and other uses.

I'm not gonna lie, these materials have posed some challenges as I've started to use them. But over the next few posts, I'll talk about what I've learned and share some of the things I've made so far. 

Theme and Variations

What do I do with a three-day weekend?  Well, this weekend, I....

Rearranged the front hall coat closet so that it holds all of my display setup (including tent!), and I never again have to haul everything up and down the stairs before and after a show.  My aching back and arms rejoice in anticipation! (Plus, I feel that all those hours playing Tetris have been justified, as fitting all that crap in a tiny space was a feat of creative placement, so double win!)

Prepped and inventoried a bunch o' stuff for this weekend's show.  Not great fun, but satisfying.

Drove to Cincinnati for a quick visit with the son.  Fun and satisfying, and since it involved dinner, delicious.

Finally finished hopping through the third reveal of the 6th Bead Soup Blog Hop.  Fun, satisfying, delicious, and inspirational.

Cheered like a wild woman for the Crimson Tide.  A football season obsession inevitability...

And spent several hours exploring a single pattern with different bead combinations. Played with lots of different daggers, leaf shapes and drops, trying not to repeat any combinations that I may have used in the past.

So here are some of the variations on the theme (please excuse the fact that they do not yet have their ear wires -- the delicate and easily offended may be put off by the soon-to-be-complete earrings' relative nakedness...)

So what did you do with your long weekend?

While waiting for the snow

The weatherman told us to expect 4" of snow. Nothing epic, especially when friends east of us were expecting, and getting, 2+ feet of winter joy.The snow here amounted to a whole lotta nothing, but I completed the "what if" project I posted about last night, with some really cool black faux coral multi-holed beads, using agate with a nice chatoyance and some red coral. It's different than many of the pieces I usually do, but that's the point of pursuing the answer to "what if?", isn't it?

So I've added another goal for this year (I'll post about all of the others later. Not that it's of interest to anyone else, but if I make those goals public, maybe I'll feel a little more pressure to follow through on them!) The newest goal is to, on a regular basis, push myself into that area of discomfort, of unfamiliarity, of "what if". I want to explore the new, to expand those boundaries and limitations we all sometimes impose on ourselves, to give voice to the creativity lurking in my brain somewhere. Some things may stay in the Drawer of Ugly Projects when they're done, but each will help me explore, learn and grow.

And in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy wearing my new necklace!