Once upon a time….
Hi I’m Sarah and I’m a rubbish designer 😊 Or my more official title, an eco artist. I take rubbish that people often throw away and ‘upcycle’ it into new shiny things.
I’ve been making things ever since I can remember. When I was little I always had a craft project on the go and my family would collect lots of rubbish for me. Cereal boxes, yoghurt pots and newspapers were all kept for me to make my creations with. I basically just never grew out of this and I went to uni to study design. It was whilst I was there I worked part time at a coffee shop. I saw that oodles of plastic bottles were thrown away, there weren’t recycle bins back then so they went straight to landfill unfortunately. I decided to collect them and try to make something instead. Pretty much each day I would collect a whole bin bag full of plastic bottles and take them home to try to turn them into something lovely. I certainly got some stares each day, walking home from work with a bin liner on my back. I’d always been fascinated with lighting and I found through a lot of experimentation that sandblasting bottles made them lovely and frosted and this diffused light incredibly well. So my plastic bottle lighting range became my first creations.
One of the first exhibitions I displayed my plastic bottle lighting.
The Early Days
When I graduated uni, I exhibited my plastic bottle lights at my degree show and from this I was invited to take part in several other exhibitions in London. At each exhibition I received feedback as to how to improve my work, make it more professional, how to potentially take it further and most importantly people seemed to liked them! This gave me more confidence in my work and showed me that it could have some potential. I had graduated in 2008, the start of the recession or the credit crunch I remember it seemed to be called back then. I figured that it was unlikely that I would find my dream job at that time, so why not start a business and see how it goes, what’s the worse that could happen?
Working at that same coffee shop for the first year or so meant that I not only could pay the rent on my dingy house in the dodgy bit of town but also allowed me access to all the plastic bottles that I needed. I’d work at the coffee shop by day, then develop by business in the evenings and at weekends. I had studied design for my degree so I had that covered, that was the part that I loved. However there was a lot to learn about how to turn my passion in to an actual business that could hopefully one day make me a living. Marketing, website, tax, book keeping, insurance, website design, these are all things I had to try to learn and am still always learning even now all these years on.
One of my first drinks bottle lights at an exhibition.
Home studio vs shared studio
Working from home lasted about 6 months, I struggled separating work from home life, finding that I was still working into the early hours. I was quite literally drowning in plastic bottles, they were EVERYWHERE! So I answered an advert from someone wanting a person to share their studio and it was right next door to my part time job. It was tiny, cold and damp in the winter and boiling hot in the summer but I loved it. It was a big step, it felt like I had a proper business and it was great to walk into work rather than just walk down the stairs to the living room. Importantly it enabled me to close the door and stop work at the end of the day and go home. (she says whilst typing this at 10pm on the living room sofa with a glass of wine, haha!) I shared this little studio with another creative. We didn’t know each other before but became firm friends in the 3 years we shared a studio. After working and living on my own for quite a while it was great to have someone to bounce ideas off and someone to talk to each day!
In my area of the shared studio
So that’s where it all began.
Over the years I have moved on from my obsession with plastic bottles although they will always hold a special place in my heart 😊 I also now regularly use aluminium drinks cans and circuit boards day to day to create my range of retail items but every now and again I get a project to work on where I can use all sorts of rubbish, anything I can get my hands on.
Over the years I have been able to work on some awesome projects, meet great customers, travel, teach workshops sharing my love of upcycling and worked with lots of different people, some who now feel like family.
There have been ups and plenty of downs, it’s caused stress, worry and countless sleepless nights but I wouldn’t change a thing.