Lawrenz Jewelry repurposes neglected treasures

They’re the sentimental objects with a shelf life. Baubles that have seen better days, newspaper clippings, dated greeting cards and personal notes that clutter the home, but that we just can’t seem to throw away.

Over time, these transitory articles will deteriorate leaving only a blurred impression of what once was a vibrant experience. Fortunately, jewelry artist Heather Lawrenz has a solution to this dilemma.

Lawrenz uses these often neglected mementos to create new jewelry pieces that are as beautiful and as meaningful as the materials from which they originally came.

With a process that’s equal parts artistic abandon and technical precision, Lawrenz combines everything from tattered fabrics to plant materials and coats them with resin to form gorgeous, individualized charms.

“Jewelry is really personal, because you’re wearing it,” Lawrenz said. “You can customize a resin bead to your style, just as you would with a frame for a photo.”

The undertaking is challenging as most of the charms are about the size of a postage stamp, and all the work must be swiftly completed with a sticky medium that’s continually hardening.

To alleviate the pressure of expressively working while the clock is ticking, Lawrenz assembles all of her compositions in a dry run before deconstructing the design and building it back up in a form layered with resin and the pieces of the actual arrangement.

After the beads have cured, they can be turned into any form of jewelry, including earrings and necklaces.

Lawrenz often calls on her education in drawing and biology when visualizing the composition for a new bead.

“A lot of times I end up making beads from dried flowers or from pieces actually found in nature,” Lawrenz said. “I assemble them in ways that look like little paintings. You have to have a point of interest, a foreground, a background — all of that plays into the final piece.”

Lawrenz says her inspiration can also come from the materials themselves or the stories behind them. And while the elements of the charms may come from the netherworlds of a patron’s junk drawer, Lawrenz’s artistic integrity ensures those wearing her repurposed compositions have a chic, rather than cheap, appearance.

The process itself also plays into the jewelry’s beauty. Since Lawrenz takes three-dimensional found objects and breaks them down to very small, abstract elements, the original forms tend to be unrecognizable to the casual observer.

“The jewelry has story behind it without it being super obvious,” Lawrenz said. “The person wearing it is aware of the story, but to someone else it’s just a cool piece of jewelry.”

The custom resin jewelry is a popular choice for brides as many tangible elements of the wedding day — bouquets, fabrics, pins and even stationary — can be preserved for nostalgia’s sake while at the same time providing a new accessory for a woman to wear long into the future.

“Ribbons, lace, flowers, letters — you can use all those real elements, and the bride knows where they’re from, but the actual jewelry doesn’t have to scream wedding,” Lawrenz said.

For the bride to be, Lawrenz can employ personal touches from the past to create jewelry for bridesmaids, the mother of the bride or for herself.

As a positive side effect, the resin charms can help create some closet space as an abundance of sentimental objects can be condensed into much smaller showpieces that are used on a daily basis rather than collecting dust on a shelf.

To learn more about custom charms, visit www.lawrenzjewelry.com. For more on this story, including additional photos, click HERE.

Editor’s Note: Anthologie is proud to support local businesses with similar interests to our own. Anthologie and Lawrenz Jewelry both work with personal mementos to create new, lasting products.