The Recycle, Reuse, Redesign Project: 5 Minute Crafts

I'm still in the: What to do with my old/broken jewelry? phase of this project. I'm also a little lazy right now. I'm on day three of seven days straight of working, and today I had to be at work by 6:30am. Needless to say, I'm a little tight on time and a little tired.

I think some people get turned off by crafts because they think crafts take forever and that they don't have the time. But when it comes to recycled crafts, a lot of the time everything you need is right in front of you, already made, it just has to be assembled correctly.

So, get out your old jewelry, ignore my grainy photos and be prepared to do 5 minute crafts.

Craft One: Table Decoration

You need: Old jewelry, a glass/vase/etc.

Take jewelry:

Put it in the container of your choice:

I suggest maybe using something a little more upscale than an old wine glass. It was all I had lying around though.

Craft two: Pin

You need: A safety pin, an old pendant from a piece of jewelry, a piece of clothing

Take the pendant:

Pin it to a shirt/whatever:

I think sometimes we just give up on broken things, but really, most broken things can be reused. It takes a little bit of thinking outside of the box, but you can usually reuse your old things. And it doesn't need to take hours, or an hour... sometimes, creating something new out of the old can take 5 minutes.

Recycle, Reuse, Redesign Project: Necklace

So today I made a necklace out of beads:

And out of the scraps of an old dress that I'm in the process of altering:

It was super easy, I just put the beads in an tied a knot after each one to hold them in place. It took maybe all of five minutes. The beads were from a broken necklace, and it was a good way to reuse some old beads and a tiny bit of extra fabric.

This is the finished product:

The question I have for the people out there who are maybe a little better at fashion than I am is do you think that the colors clash too much? How about the patterns? All in all though, it's a simple project and a good way to reuse broken jewelry!