Exhibitors

At Melanie Hand Design Jewellery we began to look for more sustainable materials to inspire our creative process. It all started with my love of upcycling old unrepairable watches, using the watch parts to make unique jewellery pieces that contain a little bit of history. As a former dressdesigner/dressmaker I had many unused pieces of material, and I began to wonder if they could find a new life as jewellery. By repurposing these off cuts of fabric that had no further use and turning them into new pieces of wearable art. I then began approaching local businesses to find out what materials they regularly threw away and set about finding ways to incorporate these materials into my designs. I found the local bicycle repair shop throws away punctured inner Tyre tubing on a weekly basis. I offered to take these Tyre tubes off their hands and set about upcycling them into beautiful earrings and jewellery. By doing this I am turning the waste materials into beautiful jewellery giving them a new life and preventing it from ending up in a landfill. What makes this even more important to me is my personal connection with the pneumatic inner Tyre tubes, as John Boyd Dunlop, my great great grandfather, re-invented them. He would have a good chuckle now if he knew what I was now making with the inner tyre tubes.I have just added a new product to my sustainable story, I am growing Hydrangea flowers, drying and preserving, then designing and making the various flowers and plants into jewellery.