Yesterday I was at the Recycle Into Art thing in Liverpool that I’ve been going on about for ages. Led by Alison Bailey Smith, it was a workshop to show us how to turn old waste wire – mostly from old televisions – into jewellery and bags.

Alison started off by showing us her favourite knotting technique but I kept forgetting how to do it mid-knot so ended up knitting a section of copper-coloured wire instead. While I slogged away at that, Alison showed us a number of other techniques including making coils from scrap plastic/foil (from sweet bags, carriers or anything really) wrapped in wire, twisting strands of wire together evenly using a hand drill and working with coaxial cable, sheathing and other scrap metals (Alison frequently uses tomato puree tubes – which are gold coloured on the inside – and the silver insides of toothpaste tubes for backing pieces).

The session was well attended – with about 10 of us around the main table – and we all brought our own ideas and other craft techniques to the party so learnt as much from each other as from Alison. With my knitted base, I played with a number of ideas for the focal piece of my bag but in the end, decided to use two small toy dinosaurs I’d brought along (Jeff and Zach) and a deadly meteorite made out of more of the copper-coloured wire and the lime green handles of a M&S carrier bag.

Given the time frame of the class, most people focused on making smaller things – jewellery or items with broach pin backs so they could be used as decorations on clothes or on bags (Alison was wearing one of her broaches as a necklace pendant; the one below was made by someone in the workshop). In hindsight I guess I should have done this too because I spent a long time knitting when I can do that at home ;) Still, it was a great workshop and while I perhaps didn’t do as many varied elements as some people, I feel I’ve got the knowledge to go it alone now – and certainly will go for it ;)

Thanks so much to Alison for running the workshop and providing all the materials. Thanks are also due to Red Dot Exhibitions for organising it and all the other (free!) workshops this week – I just wish I’d been able to get over for more of them…

(More photos to follow when I get myself organised ;) )

As I mentioned earlier in the month, it’s the ‘Recycle Into Art’ week of workshops in Liverpool this week.

The event kicked off with a musical event at St Luke’s Church – aka the Bombed Out Church – on Friday afternoon. It was led by Urban Strawberry Lunch, a music/arts group who make instruments out of waste items. Some of them are literally drums – old plastic drums of different sizes which are hit with sticks to produce sounds – while others are considerably more tuneful.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Liverpool a bit later than we’d hoped and had to get some lunch so couldn’t really take part in the workshop in the church gardens but those who were involved looked to be having fun (above).

We did get to have a play on the other USL instruments inside the former church itself though – mostly notable an instrument made out of old hollow piping (different lengths made different notes that sounded like a bass synthesizer) and the “bells” in the church tower – made from suspended old car wheel rims. We gave the “bells” a really good bashing, leaving my ears ringing afterwards too ;)

Unfortunately none of the videos we made did justice to the sound of the “bells” – it was very cool and loud – but here’s John playing the pipe instrument thing:

In a similar vein to Ecoist’s bags from old movie posters, BannerBags makes, well, bags out of old banners. Specifically, PVC banners (the sort that hang on lampposts etc) and the tarpaulins used on the sides of trucks.

At the moment, they’re concentrating on making bags out of banners used to advertise the Capital of Culture stuff in Liverpool – some of them quite obviously tied in (like the one above) but others are more subtle (like those below).

They’ve got a number of different designs available – flight bags (above), laptop/messengers (the Anglican Cathedral one below) and bowlers (like the hand one) – but are apparently open to suggestions if you fancy something else.

On a related topic, we’re off to Liverpool tomorrow for the launch event of the Recycle Into Art week of workshops – should be fun :)

Alison Bailey Smith, of the very cool wire hats, baskets and clothes, has told me about a recycling week that’s happening in Liverpool later this month.

Organised by Red Dot Exhibitions, “Recycle into Art” is a week of workshops about turning waste materials into art, furniture and various things like bags and musical instruments. There is also a trip to a recycling plant in Bootle. It all sounds wonderfully interesting and fun – and best of all, it’s FREE!

The full programme of workshops is on the site as are the contact details of the person to get in touch with if you want to go to them.

I’m hoping to go to the launch event on the Friday (because I heart St Luke’s aka the bombed out church) and hope to go to Alison’s all day workshop too – I just wish I had time to go to all the sessions (boo work, boo).

I’ve been thinking a lot about old vinyl records recently because of Renee’s great idea of using them as a canvas for art and because of Kimberly’s suggestion to poke holes in one to hold earrings – I think I’m going to combine the two ideas to make a cool jewellery display unit.

Anyway, thinking about these things reminded me of Jeff Davis’ fab creations from old vinyl. Under the Vinylux brand, he makes a range of cool household items – bowls, snack trays, picture frames – and other things like cuffs (below left) and notebooks.

I especially like the picture frame (below right) – because the record is re-used in two ways: the outside of the record becomes the frame and the inside bit is used as a coaster.