If you’ve ever wondered what really goes into a piece of Trash Panda jewellery, the answer is: a lot of love, a tonne of elbow grease, loads of discarded materials, and a surprising amount of tiny bathing.
My studio in Southsea is full of materials no one else wanted — milk and water bottles, leather s0fa scraps, factory-rejected washers, broken jewellery, textile samples, and even the odd piece of bouncy castle (yes, really). Most of it arrives a bit dusty, a bit chaotic, and a bit “Are you sure this can be made into jewellery?” But that’s the fun part.
The process starts with sorting: putting leather offcuts into colour families, categorising bottles by plastic type, grouping factory rejects into “usable,” “maybe usable,” and “absolutely not but I’ll probably keep it anyway because I think it’s cool.”
And that’s why I’m back to the dining room table for a while… the workshop is literally overflowing with salvaged stuff. Some of it I don’t want to let go of, but I’ll have to, if I can’t cut it down to a manageable amount.
Next up is cleaning – everything is sanitised, whether it’s been pre-loved or just plain rejected. That could be filling my bath with a soapy solution and hand agitating bottles (sorry, housemates) or putting lids into a guppy bag on a cold wash in the washing machine.
Then comes the cutting. Everything is hand-cut with a mix of old-school tools and gentle persuasion; no laser cutters, no electricity (other than the lights above my head), just a cutting mat, tin snips, punches, dies, a press, and a lot of patience. Each piece is made individually, which means no two pieces are ever identical. Sanding? Yes. But raw edges? Sometimes they stay. Character is the whole point.
Finally: assembling and turning those forgotten objects into earrings, pendants, studs, brooches and charms. Once you see an everyday milk bottle become a minimalist white teardrop, or a factory rejected O-ring turn into a piece of industrial chic, you understand why upcycling can be addictive.
Trash Panda isn’t about perfection, it’s about transformation. It’s about giving beauty back to something that was written off. And it’s about wearing something with a story, a past, and a bit of attitude.
If you ask me, that’s far more interesting than anything mass-produced.
Catch you soon!
Lou x
