Metamorphosis

My local Cancer Research charity shop is a wonderful source of broken jewellery and bits and bobs that I recycle into more jewellery and other things, frequently combining them with Friendly Plastic.  They are very good about saving me all the bits that might ordinarily go in the bin, so in return for their time and effort, I have made a piece of work using some of those bits, and I called it Metamorphosis.  The idea is to give it to the shop so they can either sell it, or raffle it to raise money for Cancer Research.

You can see from this photo that there is a lot of odd and broken bits of jewellery – pieces with rhinestones missing, single earings, charms etc.  I have added my own recycled items in the form of small pebbles, ribbon, lacquered metal motifs from some Indian fabric, and also some little balls made from Elizabeth Shaw’s chocolate wrappers (the chocolates went on the Christmas tree).

The brown beads in this image are some pretty revolting fused plastic beads, the sort that have no holes in them, they are just fused to the string.  A little bit of Metal Gilding Flake adds some contrast, and Gleams Gilding Wax harmonise the colours.  I mounted the canvas onto another canvas which I covered using some ancient peacock blue rayon that had belonged to my husband’s grandmother back in the day.

The only new thing in the piece was some ribbon.  The base for the work is a canvas painted with texture paint and various glazes including a good rub of Gleams and Rub n Buff in different colours.  It was fun to do, and a great way of using up all sorts of odd bits that would otherwise have gone into the bin.  When I took it down to the shop the staff were delighted with it, I hope it will raise a little bit of money for their funds.

What do you do to creatively recycle things?

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