3B BLOG

Recycling and Materiality
-Jewellery making

Recycling a water bottle,

For this workshop, I’ve decided to recycle a water bottle into a piece of jewellery as I’ve always enjoyed the process of jewellery making with crystals such as the rose quartz earrings portrayed in this picture, the resin earrings, and rings. Although I thoroughly enjoy the process of creating jewellery, I’ve noticed that in the past, before I was aware of the environmental impact of certain materials and the ways of decomposition, I’ve always used either raw materials or harmful materials such as resin which is extremely hard to biodegrade, yet I’ve never thought about the process of making jewellery with recyclable materials, especially plastic. After the immense knowledge I’ve gained while studying environmental design and my newly found interest in the environment, the idea of making jewellery with recyclable material has peaked my interest.

Rose quartz

Resin

 

My inspiration came from the fact that I’ve been a fan of small sustainable businesses that experiment with recycled materials, such as Designer FRANKA, from Glasgow, who dabbles with recycled plastic and up-cycled fabric, often sharing the process on social media platforms.

Jewellery , F. (2023)

Her use of recycled bottle caps to make earrings was a favourite of mind. I’ve owned multiple pairs of recycled jewellery from the shop.

The Process

The materials I will be using alongside the plastic are paint, and metal.

 

I’ve drawn the shape I needed on the plastic bottle and cut it out.

Afterwards, I cut out 3 varieties of sizes.

I burned out the edges to create an interesting shape, and made sure they fit inside each other. My inspiration is an oyster so I was looking for a more organic shapes.

Miller, S. (2024)

I then painted the plastic.

Then pierced and threaded it with a small pearl

 

The final result.

Reflection

This is my first time recycling plastic. I found the material to be interesting to work with. Some areas were easy such as cutting it out and burning it to shape, the only difficulty was that I could not really decide what shape it takes once it’s melted, so that was the push back with the material. When I came to pierce it, I thought it was going to be a lot more easier to pierce through but was very hard and tough to pierce into which was a surprise. I will definitely try this again with other materials in terms of jewellery-making and maybe take the other approaches of cutting up, mixing and reusing but I didn’t want to use too much heat since it’s my first time working with plastics.  I didn’t leave a lot of waste and it was pretty easy to make. I found the process of jewellery-making to be the same with other materials, but with plastic it was easier to use than when I’m using crystals or some other materials due to needing to use more wire and a lot more materials to bind, but it was pretty easy to make this piece of jewellery with the use of only two materials.

REFERENCE LIST

Jewellery , F. (2023) Franka. Available at: https://www.franka.uk/ (Accessed: 17 November 2024).

Miller, S. (2024) How do oysters make pearls and why?, Whitevictoria. Available at: https://www.whitevictoria.com/blog/how-do-oysters-make-pearls-and-why.html (Accessed: 17 November 2024).