Are you thinking of eco friendly gifts and the way you wanted to give those gifts, like me?
As the holidays are coming near I am thinking of the green gifts I want to give, and in creating my jewelry, I want to bring this consciousness of environment friendly approach. When I think of buying materials and gift boxes, I pause and wonder how I can make it more ecological. That is the brand or style I want to convey.
In my research I found how mindlessly we do stuff and hurt ourselves. As I read the natural choices blog I do agree with the writer Susan Shannon:
“The bottom line in all of this is that when you work with a small/micro jeweler, you are working with a human with a heart, soul and convictions which can easily be measured by talking to them. When you deal with billion dollar companies that steal American designs, abuse their working population and pump out inferior products by the thousands, you can be sure that there is no human moment of pause before they buy a blood diamond, irradiate a stone or pollute their rivers in the pursuit of profit.”
When I buy Swarovski crystals that are manufactured in mass scale in China I am actually disrespecting the product, it is transported from thousands of miles away, and it is not authentic Swarovski crystals. The only thing is – it is cheap.
I can easily change it buying from local sellers. Researching the Etsy site I found a fellow jewelry artist who was selling her extra supplies at a reasonable price. I also bought some of her hand made polymer beads. It made me feel better that on the Small Business Celebration Day I supported a fellow American artisan.
As I come to the Going Green blog I feel enthused by Laura Bracken. Laura had taken a resolution not to buy more materials but to re use her old stuff for one whole year and create..
She motivated me to break my old jewelry pieces that did not sell nor had any use in the last two years. So, I kept the silver wire work pendant that was a good work (I think), but I broke the old necklace piece and created a new jewelry. You can see how the necklaces changed from Image 1 and 2
Now my research is on packaging with a green fashion.
Eco etsy blog in http://blog.ecoetsy.com/ has many great ideas if you are thinking of environmental friendly gift packaging.
Here I found two great tutorials that I’d like to share with you. See how you can make this cool gift bag with only some left over remnants and a little sewing skill.
Another one is- if you want to make mailing envelopes from recycled store paper bags…
http://blog.ecoetsy.com/2011/04/making-mailing-envelopes-from-recycled-store-paper-bags/html
Both of them are tested by me and they are really simple.
You’ll be sending a strong message when you gift pack in this way. I have seen that especially young children are very receptive and they pick up these little messages
I’ll end this article showing how I reuse my old mailers for shipping packages. I save the bubble mailer envelopes that I get when I order some thing online. I also save the small boxes that I might use to send my jewelry packages. I cover these with pretty contact paper and then paste a clean label and write the address of the sender on it. It looks nice. Doesn’t it (see image 3)?
I save the price of the envelope/ box which I use to buy the Delivery Confirmation and pass this savings to my customers.
This way it is profitable and eco friendly at the same time.
Here are some books that I found useful in this subject:
* You Grow Girl: The Ground breaking Guide to Gardening by Gayla Trail .
It is s a great book on DIY gardening tips and you may find some great eco friendly gift ideas from here.
*Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home and Planet- One Room at a Time by Beth Greer
*Gifting Green- How to make Simple Elegant Bags for Eco Friendly Gift Giving – by Sonja Hakala
I have no monetary affiliation with any of the books or the sites I have mentioned.