What Exactly Is It I Do?

I use bits and pieces from broken, unwearable or undesirable vintage jewelry to create my earrings and necklaces. In some cases, I find batches of unused vintage beads and incorporate them into my designs as well. I have also started using vintage ribbon and lace...give me enough time and who knows what "old" things will appear in my jewelry?

In the online world of social networking and promoting, I am often asked to describe my work in a couple of sentences making sure I include all the key words that may lead people to my shop on etsy,
threepeats Jewelry. I am a fan of not being wasteful and proud that I take old, unwanted things and turn them into newer, desired objects. Have I recycled? To me, recycling means taking something that has already been used and using it again in the same way, so yes, I recycle and that was always the way I described, tagged and key-worded my designs.

But every time I turn around (or so it seems!) there is a new term that I think might describe what I do better, such as "upcycle." No, that implies a value judgement that what I am creating is somehow better than what came before. How about reclaiming...or refashioning or repurposing? There's reprocessing (like uranium), salvaging, saving (too noble), recovering (like lost computer files) or just plain reusing.

I know what I'm going to do...I'm going to list every single one of those terms as labels for this blog post!