For Ruth

Ruth is the WEST Team's fearless leader. She likes to reuse bits of what many would consider junk, or even trash, to make new things, in particular jewelry. This is for her:

Several weeks ago I started to watch a show called "The Lazy Environmentalist" and I was enjoying watching the host find easy ways for many people to be a bit more enviromentally friendly in their day to day lives (to be honest I was kind revelling in it, going yeah you suck, I recycle, I walk to work etc..) then they did a show about jewelry and I was oh! This was followed a few week later "Eco-trip" doing an episode on gold mining - I was oh yeah you really need to get on this!

Since I have been searching for more enviromental friendly options for my modern jewelry designs. I have found out my silver is ethically mined (good) & I am slowly switching to vintage beads, tagua nut beads, and recycled paper beads. In my search for inspiration I found on Treehugger a post about a jewelry label called Spacefruit by Becky Crawford.

She makes jewellery from plastic bottles she finds "on the beaches as well as from a recycling center where they'd otherwise be turned into things like carpets! Each shape is cut out individually by hand so no two necklaces turn out the same, so colours will vary! Almost every colour combination is possible but please be aware that purple is very rare!"

medium disc plastic necklace & bracelet

cluster petals brooch & earrings

very wiggly necklace

So I was inspired! I have been collecting out of my recycling the plastic lids from different containers. Cutting them into organicly shaped cirlces (I did ponder getting a circle punch but thought that it defeated the purpose and was a bit boring) . I have only finished one pair of earrings so far but I think I may keep it up as it was fun cutting up the lids (I have saved all the scraps to use maybe to use in a clearplastic ring made of biobased epoxy resin with plastic sprinkles???)