In high school, i was in the prime
'hippy-beading' era but i had to be different! i put my beads on little
pieces of wire and then linked them together in a chain form to make necklaces,
bracelets and earrings. i also took some classes with my high school art
teacher in fabricated and lost wax casted metal jewelry but found it too labor
intensive (and expensive!) for my teen spirit. Only now do i wish i had
continued to create jewelry in those forms.
i actually started selling jewelry at that time so i guess it was always
destined 'to be'?
Click Here for the story of the "Real Live Hippy Beads"
As i went about life, school, jobs, etc., i
didn't create much jewelry for a time although i still collected old jewelry for
my own use. i had acquired a taste for the old rhinestone brooches and
earrings from the 40's and 50's. It was easy to find these jewelry pieces
at rummage sales and flea markets. i even bought broken ones if i liked
them---thinking that i 'must' be able to 'fix' them somehow. Since i have
such a sentimental streak, i would keep EVERYTHING whether i had broke
it, lost part of it or didn't wear it anymore. (i have a pair of dangling beaded
earrings that i bought at our local county fair for $5.00 over twenty years
ago---THAT I STILL WEAR!!!
One day while looking through a
fashion type magazine, i saw a model (in a white swim-suit) wearing a really
cool, cuff=type bracelet of white buttons. It really caught my eye and got
my brain percolating...
i got out what buttons i saved and i had to 'accumulate' a 'few'? more and sewed
them on to a piece of waistband elastic that would go around my wrist. It
looked a little ugly inside but really cool on the outside! i quickly made
one in black, silver, gold and clear buttons so i was covered for any
occasion... i soon decided that I wanted pins to match and I even made a
few sets of matching earrings. for these, I sewed the buttons onto felt
and then stiffened the back with glue.
One day, while wearing one of mine, an older neighbor saw it and said that they used to make button bracelets years ago. She gave me two of hers that had beautiful old jet and gold painted buttons crocheted together on elastic thread into a cuff. I kept those beautiful, old bracelets but never tried to crochet any of my own...still had that teen---age impatience I guess?
I continued to make the button
pins in any color I could find and I continued to really haunt the garage sales
for buttons. Our local Senior Citizens center had an ongoing rummage sale
and the little ladies used to cut buttons off of old clothes,sort and price them
together by color and store them in glass
jars*.
I (almost) felt guilty every time I watched those poor little ladies adding up
my BIG piles of 5and 10 cent strings of buttons. (Although, by the
time I had progressed to other materials for my pins, those little ladies were
charging $1 to $1.25 for those same strands! Clever girls!)
Side Note---I wrote an article (published in 1993) for Jewelry Crafts Magazine on how I created my pins.
By this time, I had masses of
buttons but still every once in awhile, I would look at a pin and feel it needed
something else! I begin going through my drawers, jewelry boxes and bottom
of my purses to find little accent pieces...
...like an all red button pin that just needed that little ladybug pin or the
silver button pin that cried out for that little luggage key. It felt so
good to be able to use all those bits and pieces that I had saved...although
each time I sold a pin, a little bit of my life and history went with it...a
tarnished ring, a lone earring, an abandoned necklace...
...sigh...
OK...on with life---
As I added these embellishments, I became more excited by their arrangements and
I found that the buttons became the side and filler pieces. I loved to
gather a pile of 'stuff' in similar color groups and then shape the pins from
there. Texture and layering became as important to me as the colors
did. Old mixed with new---good mixed with poor---expensive entwined with
cheap.
Friends, family and even strangers would bring me little baggies of their own
treasures so that I could create them a memory pin. Of course, a little
piece of me went into their pins and little pieces of them remained in my stash
for others.
Once in awhile, someone would actually be apologetic about "dumping" their junk off on me to get it out of their way. I would paw through it excitedly looking for any special goodies or treasures. (My mom said I looked like a pirate greedily combing through my buried treasure.) *I sorted these treasures, organized? and stored them in glass jars and decanters so that I could admire them as well as use them for future projects. (I think I learned that came from those diligent little ladies at the Senior Citizen Center).
I feel that about this time, my
pins became a little less marketable because they became bigger, brighter and a
little more labor intensive to produce. (I was learning patience?) I
created the name "Recycled Baubles" to reflect where they came from
and it seemed more true by now. It seemed to take brave, confident people
to go out wearing one of my creations...like me!
B-u-u-u-t, for those who may be intimidated by my pieces, I have done some
smaller, scaled down versions including a series done inside of bottle
caps. Flashy, yes...wild...but small!
For the past two years, I have brought beading back into my work. Once again stringing necklaces, bracelets and bead and wire earrings to compliment many of my pin pieces. I have also used pin shapes and fashioned necklace medallions for some variety.
"The Three Sisters"
Since last August (2001), I have worked on a series of beaded figure pins that I call "Goddess Pins" which are probably 95% beads and the rest broken bits and buttons. Talk about a 180 degree turn? My beading techniques need MUCH improvement but I am able to create some different looks as well as evolving my artistic creativity.
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