Just a quick note to announce that the Junkyard Jewelry online showroom and store is officially open for business.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Both of my brothers, my dad, my mom and even one of my sisters were truck drivers at one point in their lives. They all worked for a pontoon boat manufacturing company named Playbuoy (no, that’s not a typo). Most of their runs were from Michigan down to Florida. In fact, our family trip to DisneyLand was a “working vacation” for my dad. My mom, sister and I accompanied him on his trip down. The semi truck cab was a little cramped for 4 people, so my sister and I rode inside of the shrink wrapped boats for most of the trip (note, it was not winter when we went).

Eventually dad moved away from delivering the boats, to buying wrecked pontoon boat parts, fixing them and assembling them into a sellable boat. I remember picking off the colored detailing sticker stripes on the sides of the walls so people couldn’t tell their “new” boat was a hodge podge of a bunch of other boats.

As with most projects, the remnants of this past time still live in my parents junkyard.

Here are earrings made from the guardrail of one of those wrecked pontoon boat remnants.

Buy these earrings.

When people ask me when it was I first came up with the concept of Junkyard Jewelry, if I were being completely honest, I would say about the time I learned to crawl. I grew up in a junkyard in a small town in the middle of Michigan. Our house was surrounded by defunct school buses, old Ford tractors (we were in farming country), forklifts (to move around the junk) and countless other glorious pieces of metal. My sister and I would often repurpose piston rings, O-rings  or anything we thought was beautiful into wearable accessories. Our innovations were sparked by our whole family of 7. I was fairly old when I realized distributor caps weren’t pencil holders. Or rather, I was confused when I first saw a pencil holder in an engine.  New uses for old things were commonplace in our household and made it difficult NOT to look around and contemplate “hmmm, what else could I use this for?”

Although during high school I was thoroughly mortified of admitting I lived in a junkyard, I now realize what a gem of a childhood I had. Junkyard Jewelry is the culmination of trying to reignite the childhood excitement I had sifting through old metal parts and pieces and making them into something new. I may never see rockstars on MTV wearing junkyard jewelry, but as long as I keep on giggling with dirty hands (see childhood picture below) I have succeeded.

I, as do a lot of people, feel a special connection to my first vehicle. Getting my driver’s license gave me a freedom I’d never had before. No more riding shotgun in my mom’s powder blue LTD. No more begging for rides from my older friends. Having my own wheels was one of the most liberating, exciting times of my life. Experiencing this freedom with my new best friend: a 1986 Diesel Ford Ranger was the icing on my sweet 16 birthday cake.

It helps that I pretty much had the raddest truck ever. But she didn’t start off that way. I inherited a rust orange ranger with no radio, no chrome and no personality. I was 15 with a part time job at an ice cream shop, so I fixed that pickup up as much as I could with 400 bucks. My brother taught me how to disc sand, bondo, prime and wet sand a vehicle. Then he painted it fire engine red. I saw a hood scoop on a broken down school bus in the junkyard that was obviously not doing anything, so I put it on my truck to make it look tougher. Then I put some Crager rims on her along with a matching chrome back bumper, a new-ish stereo with a tape deck (don’t be jealous) and a rubber mat for the truck bed to cover up where I had run out of fire engine red paint. I washed and waxed that Ranger every week. EVERY WEEK. In return, she rewarded me with 48 mpg and never broke down.

Did I mention she was an invention of my dear dads? He lifted an engine from an old Isuzu pup diesel pickup and dropped it into the ranger. He built conversion parts to make it run, including a rocket-launcher type glow plug warmer button that lived under the dash that I would push while counting out 3-Mississippis . He even made a plug in engine warmer for her from an old electric razor (the face kind, not the cell phone kind) recharger he had laying around. The exhaust manifold was “on the wrong side” so when the exhaust pipe was installed it hit the gas tank, so we bent exhaust pipe to go around the gas tank it. I could go on and on about this pickup because it was truly special. Did I mention the engine was put into the ranger body without being rebuilt? AND it had 200K miles on it? AND I drove it for 60K more miles with no problems? Best. Vehicle. EVER.

It’s not fair for me to go on and on about how one-of-a-kind she was, because my brother had the same frankensteined masterpiece that he drove as well. Except his was blue and didn’t have a hood scoop, so. obviously, it didn’t have as much style. Regardless, we both acquired a taste for diesels.

Present day, my brother drives a Diesel Isuzu Amigo . While rebuilding the engine for his new gem, he had some scrap parts, which I gladly grabbed proving that my first vehicle was not only pretty on the outside, but on the inside as well!

Earrings made from a 1981 Turbo Diesel piston ring wrapped around sterling silver wire and capped off with a nut.

Buy these earrings.

I’ve been flapping my gums a lot lately about Junkyard Jewelry. One thing I’ve noticed during my excessive blathering is people assume Junkyard Jewelry is accessories for females. While I will agree that we do carry a lot of female-specific goodies, we do have manly jewels (get your mind out of the gutter, people) as well.

In fact, while this belt buckle pictured below is officially unisex, I think it looks tastiest on a dude. I would totally approach a stranger if he was wearing this belt buckle and strike up a conversation. That might be because of my love of Fords though. You can take the girl out of Michigan!

Buy this belt buckle.

Most of the junkyard jewelry pieces take shape with a sketch (“sketches” in sterling silver get expensive), but occasionally I forgo the sketching process and just play.

I came across a rubber modern looking piece during one of my junkyard scavenges. When I got home, I decided to make it into a pendant, but I didn’t have very much thin gauge sterling wire. I did, however, have some thicker stock and I figured I would try to use that. While bending the stubborn wire around the rubber, I realized it wasn’t going to work. As I got ready to unravel the wire to use on a different piece, I had a change of heart as I realized it was beautiful just the way it was.

The moral of the story: sometimes we get too close to our “mistakes” and don’t realize they aren’t mistakes at all.

Here’s a picture of the final piece. The reclaimed “rubber piece” is an air lock seal. My dad thinks (his photographic memory isn’t as crisp as it used to be) it’s from a glad hand on a semi truck.

Buy this necklace.

One of the challenges I’m finding in making jewelry out of reclaimed scrapyard materials is how to find items light and delicate enough to adorn someone’s neck or finger OR how to chop something down to make it delicate enough to wear. Generally, jewelry making supplies are fairly dainty and can’t handle cutting through 2 inch industrial steel. Luckily, I come from a very DIY I’ve-got-just-the-powertool-for-you type family. When I was fretting about how to cut the aforementioned 2 inch industrial steel pipes into thin, manageable slices without sawing off my arm or overheating the saw blade, my brother showed me how to use an industrial band saw that he happened to have in his pole barn. I was a little freaked out at first because the machine is HUGE and looked like it had been manufactured in the early 40’s (read: no safety features). After the first couple of cuts, I wanted to take it home with me. Too bad it weighs a couple of tons and it doesn’t really match my drapes.

Here’s a video of the monsterous machine.

And here’s one of the final products from the trailer pipe.

Buy this necklace.

I’m not going to salt-coat it (the opposite of sugar coating)… every step of making junkyard jewelry is fun. Each piece begins either by drawing (fun!) or scavenging the acre of scrapyard I grew up on to find what I’ve coined “treasures” (double fun!!). Generally this scouting happens with my mom. My mom–I have a feeling she’s going to come up a lot in these posts–is the most humble, one of a kind, giving human you will ever meet. When I explained my vision for making jewelry out of junk to her, she pondered it and then came out with me on my very first “treasure hunt”… well, my first hunt as an adult.

The first hunt began with her holding pieces up and discarding them while saying “This looks pretty neat, but it’s all rusty” only to have me rush over, grab it and say “Yes, rust! Rust is great!! Look at how beautiful it is.” My mother who spends 5 months out of every year cursing (if my mother ever cursed) Michigan for salting the roads and ultimately turning the bottoms of her cars/trucks the evil rust orange looked at me, perplexed… “You LIKE the rust?” It only took 10 minutes before her junkyard gem hunting skills outpaced mine. Her 1 gallon ice cream bucket was twice as heavy as mine with way more usable goodies.

Below are some pictures of my mom sorting through a bucket of piston rings in her new favorite color… rust.