Upcycle Old or Broken Jewelry

One of the things I love to do, is to take broken or old jewelry and upcycle it into new and beautiful jewelry. I am always looking for tutorials, and ideas to do this. Below is a video with ideas for purse bling using broken jewelry. Check it out!

 

Earth Day Is April 21st Recyclable Jewelry Tutorial with Bottle Caps

All this next week, I will be posting ideas on how to recycle, reuse, and reduce jewelry and other items to make jewelry. If I find other cool ideas, I will share them too. First up, is this beautiful bottle cap necklace.

I Am Trying Not To Be Creative

This is way too hard, for me.  I have so many ideas that I want to work on.  I did get a bunch of my pendants turned into necklaces, sold a pair of heart earrings on Ebay, and created the item below. I am always trying to think of ways to upcycle, recycle or reuse items.  I have painted garden solar lights, made candy jars, and other cool items.  Well, I had an idea to make a cat cave.  While I was thinking about it, I wanted something that would stay somewhat stiff, so kitty could come and go as it wanted.  Then, I realized by laundry soap jug was a nice big size.  I made the black and white cocoon to go around the soap jug, and you see the results.  I don't have a real cat, lol.  These would be great for any cat, kitten, puppy, or as an outside shelter for stray cats to keep warm and safe.  I am currently making a red one, with white ruffle trim, so it will look like a flower cave.  Check it out in my Etsy store. 

Day 10 of #30DOC Butterfly Feeders

Today is day 10 of the 30 Days of Creativity Challenge, and Caitlin and I made a butterfly feeder using a painted recycled sauce jar. This is actually a project for our Earth Kids group, but I wanted to test one first to see how it worked. First the jar was already painted by myself. Then I had to figure out how to hang it. I think in the end I decided a bracket of some sort will work best. But, instead I crocheted a pretty purple hanger. You can see in theory it should work. But, once you add the sugar water it is just too heavy to be held up. Anyway after some thinking I used an old Ticki Torch that is just the shell left over. I put the jar in the Tiki Holder and then using my crocheted holder used that to get the pieces of wood to embrace and hold the butterfly feeder in place. This will suffice for now, until I get a proper bracket. We tried the feeder with the rotten fruit in a pan. That didn't work. The birds and squirrels thought it was theirs. And they just knocked it all over and made a big mess. Then I saw a website where they said to use an old jar. If you paint the jar pretty with bright colors it will help attract the butterflies and humming birds. Then use a nail to put a hole in the top. Then cut a sponge into very thin strips. Put as many of the sponge strips as you can into the hole, making a seal. Then dissolve one part sugar to two parts water and put it in the jar. Hang it upside down and wait for the butterflies and humming birds to visit. At first it dripped very fast and I thought oh no it will be gone in an hour. But, it slowed right down after the sponges were saturated. I was able to fit three sponges into the nail hole. I was going to paint today, something purple, but never did get to it.