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Health & Fitness

Restyle Your Jewelry Box

I've been learning how fun it is to make recycled jewelry--you can too at Think Outside the Store's upcoming jewelry swap!

As a clothing artist, I have always enjoyed expressing myself through my clothing. I was never really that interested in jewelry—until I started taking Jamillah Abdullah's jewelry workshops at my studio.

When it comes to sewing, I have always liked to take old clothes and make them into new ones much more than I like following patterns. It’s the process of taking something and transforming it into my own style that really gets me excited. I never really wore jewelry or really found it that interesting—until I learned from Jamillah how fun it is to do the same thing with jewelry that I like to do with my clothes.

It turns out that making recycled jewelry is a lot like making accessories out of clothing---once you learn a few tools and tricks, its easy to make your own creative new designs. For example, with just the tools pictured here and some wire, it’s easy to deconstruct and restyle all kinds of items!

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I learned from Jamillah that every piece of jewelry is made up of segments that can be taken apart and put back together in different patterns. For example, necklaces and bracelets are made up of chains and beads connected by wire links. In Jamillah’s necklace workshop, I used the chain from one necklace and made links to attach beads from several different necklaces, and then added a couple matching fabric flowers. (see picture)

In her basic beading workshop, I learned how to make clip on earrings, which is great, because it’s hard to find cool earrings when you don’t have pierced ears. Now that I’ve learned how easy it is to take off the last link of the earrings and replace the part that would go through your ear with a clip on attachment, I can wear any earring around! (It still kind of hurts after a while, but, for the sake of showing off my beading techniques, it’s worth it! Well, maybe for a couple hours.)

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Rings are a really easy way to use fun beads from deconstructed bracelets or necklaces—I made the ones in the picture using the wire wrapping techniques I learned in Jamillah’s rings class.

Now that I’ve learned to see jewelry in a whole new way, I’m excited to have discovered a fun new way to decorate myself. I’m really looking forward to the jewelry swap we’re hosting on May 20 from 1-4pm at the studio because I’m hoping to get a whole lot of new (old) materials to make creative designs out of!

It’s like a clothing swap, but with jewelry--participants bring old jewelry and trade it for their neighbors.’ At our swap, the $5 admission fee also includes tips and tricks for recycling your finds into new designs because Jamillah will be on hand to demonstrate tools and techniques for deconstructing and restyling jewelry. Hope to see you there! You can also check out http://www.jamillahsjems.blogspot.com/ for more examples of Jamillah’s work.

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