Upcycling: Recycling Plastic - Making Jewelry

If you perceive of upcycled jewelry as taking your mother's costume jewelry, breaking it down and reassembling in a new way.... well that's one way of doing it. But this isn't that kind of jewelry.

Upcycling plastic takes recycling in a new direction. It's the art of reworking something we might otherwise have thrown away and turning it into something beautiful?

When you upcycle plastic, you can literally turn trash: shampoo, lotion and cleaning supply bottles, even coffee cans, into jewelry treasures.

I started making upcycled jewelry years ago. Of course it wasn't called "upcycled" back then. Most people weren't even talking about being "Green," and saving the planet had nothing to do with it.

It was nearly 20 years ago and I had limited knowledge of local bead and jewelry making suppliers or jewelry supply catalogs; but I still had a driving desire to learn and experiment with creating jewelry from new and different materials.

I don't remember the specific moment I contemplated making jewelry from a coffee can; it could easily have been early one morning after my second or third cup of coffee. But somehow the idea of cutting up a coffee can and turning it into jewelry seemed ideal. I was a serious coffee lover way before Starbucks came to town. That meant I made it myself, which gave me easy access to those colorful metal cans. And it was free.

I upcycled coffee cans into jewelry long before I knew how to use a jeweler's saw or a blowtorch; so I cut my cans with metal shears from a local hardware store. It was tedious work dealing with those sharp coffee can edges.

For cans with labels, I peeled them off and used a soldering iron to meld copper to bare metal. For the painted kind, I incorporated the colorful designs into my work.

I sold recycled creations right alongside my sterling and copper jewelry at arts and craft shows. I remember the fascination with what I was doing. Teachers, in particular, thought the idea of recycling coffee cans was wonderful and bought them to introduce the idea to their classes.