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Junk Jewellery

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A bracelet made with tissue paper

Junk Jewellery is an obsession with me.

Why?

Because making junk jewellery is fun, inexpensive and helps recycle waste.

When people give me presents, I am just as grateful for whatever wrappings, boxes or tissue that come with them.

Only last month my lovely friends in Brighton sent me flowers that came with gorgeous red tissue.

After I had arranged the flowers, I set about turning the ‘junk’ they were wrapped in (the stuff people often screw up and throw away), into jewellery.

One of my favourite things to do is make something from the detritus of people's kindness and send it to them as a gift. Click To Tweet

My theory is, it will always remind them of their own kindness and let them know how much it meant.

So that is why I turned the tissue in the pic below into the junk jewellery you see bedside it.

To find out more about paper beading click here.


The red tissue paper I used to make the bracelets on the right.

Junk Jewellery is surprisingly tough.

People often ask me how I can possibly make a wearable bracelet out of paper and even flimsy tissue paper.

I use all sorts of things to glaze my beads but I have also been developing my technique for heat-glazing them – which is what I did with these tissue paper beads.

Wear Your Junk Jewellery With Pride! The pieces you see here were made from very small discarded paper bags.

You can make junk jewellery from practically any piece of scrap paper – it’s surprising how many beads you can make from an opened out paper bag.

So the next time you buy a birthday card and take it home in a paper bag, don’t screw the bag up and throw away.

See it as a precious craft resource and make a beautiful junk jewellery bracelet to send with the card. Have fun!

If you want to know more about my junk jewellery process, leave a comment or fill in the contact form.

6 thoughts on “Junk Jewellery”

  1. Wow, you are truly an artist. The bracelets are beautiful and I love the creativity behind it…..looking at what could simply be trash and turning it into something beautiful!

    1. Thank you for that lovely compliment! It comes from an obsession to create without spending money or wasting perfectly good materials. Anyone can make pretty stuff from commercial craft products but using junk is a lovely challenge. Thanks for taking the time to look and comment.

  2. The bracelets are amazing Gilly. You are very creative and talented to be able to turn paper into beautiful jewellery. I love the fact that something that would normally get thrown away can be turned into something that gives pleasure to someone. Great work and I will try your tutorial when it’s done.

    1. Hello Judith! Thanks for visiting here and commenting. I will get the tutorial up ASAP. Just in the middle of preparing some workshops to teach people this stuff and then I will get on it. We warned, it is addictive and you won’t throw ANYTHING away again!

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