Hi friends!
I'm having Kim from Trashy Crafter visit and share her story! Welcome Kim!
Books
are magical, they give you the ability to go on a jungle safari one minute and
a deep see dive with mermaids the next, but what happens when books has gotten
lots of love from years of use? The pages get creased, dog-eared and ripped,
the bend or even start to fall off.
That’s where my Mom Helen and I come in, and this is where the story of
Trashy Crafter begins.
My
name is Kim, and I have pretty much been a crafter since I was old enough to hold
scissors in my hand and not eat the Elmer’s glue. As a little girl I would come home from
school each day, and as long as my homework was done I could create crafts all
afternoon at my Grandmas house until my Mom and Dad came to pick my sister and
I up after work. My Grandma made
beautiful crafts and sold at lots of holiday craft shows, crafting ran in my
blood and it was bound to become a part of my life some way or another.
One
day while I was in my senior year of college and my Mom and I went to the local
thrift store. While there we noticed they had these auction bins out front of
the store full of damaged and outdated books.
We found out that when books would not sell at the thrift store because
of being damaged or outdated, they auctioned them off, and if the folks sifting
through the auction bin thought could not sell the book or it was too damaged
it was just thrown away.
Needless
to say my Mom and I were heartbroken that all those beautifully illustrated children’s
books were just thrown away… so we grabbed about 25 books each in our arms and
took them home. I was really busy with
school at the time, so the books sat in the corner of my room for about 3
months. I was trying to think of a
useful thing to turn the books into when it hit me! I was very lucky to have a 3rd
grade teacher that was very crafty, her name was Mrs. Bryant. She had taught us how to roll magazines pages
into paper beads (I’m sure many of you have done this in girl scouts or grade
school). I made my first few beads and
knew from then I was hooked, the most magical part about it to me is that you
not only create beautiful, colorful unique beads made from something that was
going to be thrown into a landfill, but you know what book or item it was made
from!
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Everyone
has stories, and connects with them so well, the reason we continue to create
recycled book beads, map beads and sheet music beads is that when people
purchase a set at a local craft show or online they have a story behind what
they wear…. Perhaps they went on a road trip across the country, and that map
bead bracelet they wear reminds them of the fun they had, or they had a band
teacher that taught them to play an instrument, so they give them a sheet music
bracelet as a token of appreciation… or even a gift for a mom or teacher that
read you a book as a child that connected with you and stayed in your memory to
this day. As humans we all connect
universally with stories, and it’s a beautiful thing to throw away, so my Mom
and I plan on fighting the good fight and continuing to turn old books into
beautiful, wearable works of art.
Our
Process:
My
Mom Helen and I gather the books from a lot of different places, sometimes we
find them in cardboard boxes outside of library’s, in thrift stores on the
clearance shelf or in the bins, and even get books, maps or sheet music donated
from folks that love and support our mission. Once we gather all of the books
we measure and hand cut the book pages into long narrow triangle strips and
roll them one at a time onto lollipop sticks.
Once they are on there we coat each bead 3-5 times depending on the
thickness of the paper.
Once that is
done we spray them with a matte finish and then we start to make them into the
finished jewelry.
We purchase damaged
necklaces and bracelets from the local thrift store and strip them apart to
repurpose the beads.
We
create the jewelry with a mixture of the paper book page beads we made along
with the repurposed beads. Once that is finished, we hand cut recycled
cardboard bracelet holders and place the book labeling on to each set so folks
know what book their bracelets were made from!
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I hope you enter my giveaway and take a peek at my
shop!
Hop over to download the binder pages freebie HERE and then check out the fluency packet HERE! 
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