From Melbourne, Australia, the jewelry artist (or jewellerey artist) Mainichi creates playful necklaces from recycled upholstery leather and found materials. Many of her necklaces contain movement with hanging, dangling strings and objects. Other pieces consist of layering leathers with vintage Japanese kimono silk fabric or felt with stitched details. Simply gorgeous.
Read about her adventures in jewelry design, interior design and parenting on her blog: http://www.mainichidesign.blogspot.com/ and check out her flickr site…it is inspirational!
Necklace is $54.00 at Mainichi’s Etsy Shop

Probably best known for his work on altered books, Brian Dettmer also works with altered cassettes and video tape. His work is meticulous. For one piece described in the video, he took over 10,000 photos of the work in progress. The result is an animation of the piece coming alive. His work is being show in galleries in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Atlanta. View more of his work on his flickr page.

Altered books:

Detail of altered books:

Incredible portraits created from recycled cassette tape by artist, Erika Iris Simmons, aka, iri5. These pieces are from her “Ghost in the Machine” series. Most of the work created by iri5 is made from recycled or found materials. In addition to these true to life portraits, she has some amazing collages using recycled paper on her website, http://www.iri5.com/. Her work can also be seen on flickr.com. She is definitely a force!! ..and one to keep an eye on.
Each piece is about $1500.00 to $2000.00 at iri5.com

Lovely rugs made from recycled T-shirts. I’m sure they are nice and cushy and soft to step on… but the nicest part is that you can just throw these into the washing machine and hang them out to dry. Handcrafted by the talented Etsy seller, Green at Heart, aka Laurine. She has lots of fun designs and many color combinations on her site, also custom work is available. Did someone really request a rug to match her china pattern? Sacrebleu!
$40.00 – $200.00 at Green at Heart’s Etsy Shop
If you are interested in rugs, check out recycled plastic rugs, and more recycled rugs.

Working on a little peace theme today…. First up:
The peace sign handbag is handmade in Guatemala from recycled vintage textiles. Perfect when you want a unique and original gift. From Gambia, Africa, comes these peace pendants made entirely from leftover scrap wood by local artisans. This is part of a movement that you can support to reduce illegal woodcutting and harvest sustainably. All products from Planet One Gifts are produced under fair trade principles.
Available at Planet One Gifts