Upcycled Beer Can Jewelry!

I'm so excited to finally be unveiling a little mini-collection of jewelry that I've been thinking about for quite a while... all made from recycled aluminum cans.  I've been saving cool looking beer and carbonated water cans for months.  Eric even bought beers just based on the beer can art.  (What a guy, right??)  I finally carved out the time to make a decent sized batch of earrings and necklaces over the past week.  Fair warning... this post is going to be heavy on the pictures and relatively (for me, anyway!) short on the words.

I have been slaving away over some really fun and (mostly) colorful earrings.  These guys are truly a labor of love because they are majorly time intensive.  Seriously, I counted up 11 distinct steps before I even got to adding the beads and ear wires!  For that reason, I'm pricing this little cuties at $26 a pair.  I've made these with copper, brass, and arte metal and used niobium ear wires for all of them.  (I love that niobuim is hypoallergenic, nickel and lead free, AND comes in tons of great finishes!)

While working on those bigger flowers, I ended up with a stray pair of small flowers with a daisy design (from Daisy Cutter Pale Ale from Half Acre in Chicago) so I decided to try a more diminutive style of earring.  I'm a little bit in love with this new, tiny design and hope to whip up a few more pairs before next weekend for those who like a smaller earring.  What do you think??

The earrings were my original idea for using my now sizable aluminum can collection, but I wanted to be able to do something with larger swaths of the beer-y artwork.  I decided to play around with some filigree wrapped pendants.  I had made some simple medallion necklaces last fall that sold really well for me, so I decided to use that design as a jumping off point for this new line.  I have these in either 20 or 28 inches for $28 each.  If you need a different chain length that is totally doable too.  I aim to please!

How many of these beer cans do you recognize?

Eric couldn't help but get in on the act too!  Where I'm more into colors and patterns overall, Eric all about the logos and other weird details you might find on beer cans.  He really wanted to be able to dap (curve) the aluminum pieces as well as the embossed brass circles behind them, but the aluminum tended to bend and look weird.  So, for his earring designs, we hung a smaller aluminum can circle in front of the curved brass.  I made him do the embossing and dapping himself... and he picked out the beads to go with each pair but I put them together for him.  Teamwork!

All of Eric's earrings feature art from Indeed Brewing cans.

This is hopefully just the very start of something... I've got more design ideas in mind but need time to play and experiment more.

All of these pieces will be available for purchase for the fist time at the Art Wander, September 22-24.  Got a favorite beverage can that you'd love to see turned into fun jewelry?  I'd love to talk to you about your special orders!