Jewellery re-creation – transforming old jewellery into new!

A photo essay of the re-imagining of a simple bracelet, quirky brooch and a couple of necklaces into a pair of earrings.

 

Do Re Me + The Treasury jewellery workshop

If you haven’t yet heard of Do Re Me it’s time to get with the program. The Craft Cubed festival program that is! Do Re Me has created a festival within a festival; ‘Share the Love’ is a celebration of all things crafty with a host of fantastic workshops and creative happenings.

Last Saturday I hosted a bumper four-hour edition of The Treasury at Do Re Me headquarters in Elsternwick. Incorporating a shop and a workshop area, visiting Do Re Me on a grey winter’s afternoon is like walking into a rosewater-frosted cupcake that has just come out of the oven – all warm and tasty, and filled with sweetness and light!

Workshopping designs using old jewellery

These gorgeous pendants were made by an 11 year old who had carefully selected each trinket to represent the person who was to receive the necklace as a gift!

The Treasury in The Age!

The Treasury was mentioned in Michael Green‘s article in The Age yesterday, Fix the world, piece by piece. The article talks about FixIt‘s initiative to encourage people to get together in small groups and fix their stuff, as well as the increasing interest in repair in general. It seems you could plan a round-the-world trip based on repair cafes and hubs – I made the long and complicated trip out to visit the Fixer’s Collective while in New York only to find they were closed for the summer, oh well, next time! The Bowe Reuse and Repair Centre in Sydney sounds AMAZING. Anyone want to start one with me here in Melbourne?!

The next Treasury workshop is in two weeks (Aug 25th) – as always, places are limited to 6 so make a booking quick!

Fix It! at the Sustainable Living Festival

Using the Sustainable Living Festival to launch this Melbourne initiative, the goal is to divert waste, build skills, and model systems-thinking by having skilled volunteers guide the public through their own repair tasks in a social atmosphere.

Fix It is a volunteer, community and free public event.  Our hope is for people to return home from this event inspired to host their own skills exchanges, big or small.  We imagine Fix It events could fit many forms: work drinks, a BBQ, a school club, workshops, a skills auction, a stall at the farmer’s market.  

Info for Volunteer Fixers

The Fix It Sustainable Living Fest event needs Fixers (that’s you) 10:45 am-4:15 pm on Sunday 19 Feb.  We’ll hold one orientation meeting beforehand around 1 Feb. We are looking for Fixers in the areas of “Stitches” (textiles), “Switches” (lamp repair & rejuvenation), and “Splinters” (woodworking with hand tools). We hope you can bring along tools to use, but will try to help with a small amount of materials to fix/upcycle & common tools. We’re also hoping to provide you lunch…

Interested Fixers, please email April the following info:

a. 1-3 sentences of bio for the public. Who are you? What is your passion?

b. What skills would you like to share?

c. What are your favourite fixing/making resources in Melbourne?

d. Would you like an A4 pin board space to display your business/contact info or project of choice?  You can also hand out business cards while you’re fixing if you like.  

e. What extras would you like us to provide for your work? Electricity, scrap fabric/wood, sockets, batteries, etc?

Look forward to seeing you there!

 

The Treasury jewellery fixing recreation workshop – Christmas Special!

Had the most wonderful time yesterday at The Treasury workshop!

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The lovely miss Lara McPherson from Sustainable Fashion Australia was in attendance, along with the equally dashing Verity McLucas of Future Fashion Now fame.

Apart from the usual fixing and re-imagining of our old jewellery, we also made pompoms out of vintage fabric to put on the Christmas tree!
Its very easy and looks wonderful – you’re welcome to use the idea for yourself. Happy making!

The Repair Workshops and The Treasury; same-same but different.

Hmmm, it seems that having two ‘repair/fixing’ projects running at the same time is confusing y’all a wee bit. Let me clarify:

The Treasury is an on-going initiative I set up in 2009 in an effort to bridge the gap between my contemporary jewellery practice, and my beliefs in the need for a sustainable future. It manifests itself mainly in the form of jewellery fixing workshops which I hold once a month at my studio in Melbourne, Australia.

The Repair Workshops is a one-off sustainability/art project I set up to take the idea of ‘repair’ and ‘repurposing’ to a wider audience – namely anyone and everyone! The project (part of the State of Design festival) will culminate in a two day, all-out fixing festival of ideas and good ol’ fashioned inspiration. Come and visit us this weekend!

Craft Cubed event guide has been launched!

Oh wow, festivals come in thick and fast this time of year. You’ve just started to look forward to some time at home after the State of Design festival and now the Craft Cubed festival pops up its crafty little head to offer you even more events, workshops, open studios and exhibtions!

 

Of course the first Craft Cubed event I have to mention is The Treasury – we’re doing TWO very special classes with guest  designers Anna Davern and Dylan Martorell. Anna is one of Melbourne’s most famous and talented jewellers, and Dylan is an illustrator, sculpter, musician and all-round creative master. I’ll let you know more about this later but bookings are already open so check it out and book it quick!

Apart from being involved in The Treasury, Anna Davern (along with Cass Partington aand Nicky Hepburn) is also presenting her studio to the public as part of the Open Studios program. If you’re not familiar with Anna’s work check out her website and blog, it’s lovely.

The Nicholas building is again having Open Studios. Unfortunately I won’t be involved this year as The Repair Workshops is taking priority, but check out the work of my very talented studio mates Jessica (illustration), Min (eco fashion), Eva (creative stuff) and Jake (jewellery).

The Social Studio will be stationed in the Atrium at Federation Square from the 5th to the 24th of August. On the 20th there’ll be a special performance from RISE – these people are amazing, don’t miss it!

Arty repairs and free fixes!

I stumbled across this guy as I was Googling The Repair Workshops to make sure we were at the top of the list (don’t judge me), and oh how I smiled for the joys of being alive and finding kindred spirits over the other side of the world!

Repair by Roland Roos

Roland Roos embarked on a two-year long project (2008-2010) where he fixed things in the public sphere.

“Each repair is intended to restore a particular detail to its pre-damaged state. Before and after the repair a photograph is taken of the unsolicited assignment. The photo taken before the repair is the only existing document of the damaged objects and thus becomes a unicum. All of these unicum photos are on sale for 320CHF each which is the average amount of money that is spent for one repair.”

Jan Vormann is another artist worthy of my ‘smile and sigh’ award for awesomeness – he spent three years travelling the world fixing crumbling walls and monuments with Lego.

Jan Vormann's repair work

Jan says “My work draws attention to the smallest parts of our cities that are falling apart because of the brightness of the Lego.”

I also came across Juliana Santacruz Herrera who has taken it upon herself to fix the sidewalks of Paris with brightly coloured coiled fabric – these are so beautiful and so exciting, I think the blog I found it on sums it up quite nicely; I’m Jealous of Juliana Santacruz Herrera!

Juliana Santacruz Herrera's Repaired Sidewalks of Paris

On a more practical level (though far less beautiful) are these free bike repair stations set up in Cambridge as part of a program to encourage more people to ride bikes. I’d like to see the City of Melbourne set some of these up next to the Melbourne Bike Share stations around Melbourne – anyone agree?!

Free Bike Repair Stations in Cambridge

The Repair Workshops featured in Green Magazine!

I’m so excited to anounce that Green Magazine (one of my favourite mags!) has profiled our project The Repair Workshops in this month’s issue.

This is also a great time to remind you to register your items to be repaired by our amazing collaborators over the weekend of  the 30th and 31st of July.

Speaking of collaborators, here we are!

Photo byJo Duck

Four weeks to go until the project and there’s a lot of work still to be done. We’ve been making regular visits to Vinnies and the Brotherhood to sift through their skips and  pick out the exciting bits (stuff otherwise destined to landfill) to use in our closed workshops in the week leading up to our big weekend. The fixed and re-imagined pieces made during this closed collaboration will then be on display and sold in a live auction with all proceeds going to the good people at Environment Victoria. I must say the insight i’ve gained through these visits to the opshops has really opened my eyes to what I perceive to be a very large waste problem, with the charities coping the full brunt of it. Each week they are forced to spend an average of $400 dealing with the removal of other people’s junk. I think its safe to say that most people have good intentions when dropping off stuff to charities – they think “this kettle just needs a bit of a clean and it’ll come up great” or “This table is a classic, all it needs is a fixed leg” – but unfortunately this line of thinking leads to the donated item having to be sent straight to landfill, as the charities don’t have the space, the people-power, the time or the tools/means to store, clean or fix everything that they get donated. As a natural born hoarder, and as someone who can see the beauty in almost anything, seeing all this amazing stuff go to landfill just kills me. As I said, the problem is LARGE and feeds into even bigger issues of over-consumption and they way we are geared towards a largely throw-away society, but we CAN be part of the solution. We can start by thinking twice about what we are giving away to charity and why. If you wouldn’t offer it to your best friend, then the charity probably doesn’t want it either. WASH things before you drop them off, fix the things you can and ALWAYS drop them off within business hours because as soon as they’re rained on they’re usually ruined.

Fhewf, I better leave it there, I have things to fix – and there’s only four weeks to go……

The Treasury on Fringe Lane Channel 31

Some time during the middle of last year, a lovely lady named Christina Laria got in touch with me to ask if she could do a short documentary on The Treasury. I had my reservations as, The Treasury was still in its infancy, but in the end I thought ‘why not?’, its not every day you get an offer like  this. And what a lovely thing it is to see this version of The Treasury suspended in time. We’ve come a long way since then, but I’ll hope you’ll enjoying watching this version of The Treasury jewellery fixing workshops as they were in 2010.