(Jarrod with our junkyard find - a 56 Buick Special hood)
We came across this beauty while hunting for materials in a junkyard 100 miles from our home studio. It was just a hood, laying there among many long forgotten treasures. The rest of the vehicle was nowhere in sight.
The thing we noticed that was truly "special" about this 56 Buick Special hood we found was the paint. We immediately got excited about the potential this old car part had for making jewelry. Decades of exposure to the elements revealed unique layers of paint. Beneath the classic turquoise paint; it's original pink paint was showing through. We felt like we hit the jackpot! Well, fingers crossed anyway. The thing is, we often have no idea when we are at the junkyard if the piece we are taking back to the studio will work or not. We don't know if the paint is sturdy enough to withstand bending and cutting without flaking off. Working with the metal and trying to keep the original car paint intact can be challenging (we never paint any of the metal we work with, it's important to us to keep the integrity of the original part intact) and pieces we were making often have to be scrapped because they didn't work out. Each car part is different and it's a constant trial and error process when making jewelry with this medium.
(layers of paint showing on the 56 Buick Special)
We decided to take a chance and bring this lonely Buick hood home with us. We got to work cutting it up and figured we'd try making a few pieces of jewelry with it. To our surprise it worked and even better, the two different colors of paint gave each piece of jewelry we made an extremely beautiful and unique look.
(one of our bracelets made from the 56 Buick Special)
There as so many things we love about what we do but the treasure hunt is definitely one of them. Spending hours in the junkyard, walking through hundreds of old cars and discarded parts and finding those incredible patinas and colors to make our jewelry with is such a thrill. These old cars are beautiful works of art themselves and we love that we can give them new life. The history and the story that we are able to pass on through working with this material never ceases to amaze us.
(a collection of jewelry we made from the 56 Buick Special)
