Beautiful, don’t you think? After you look at the images, please read why I am in awe of 26 year old Florie Salnot. She’s one to watch.
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Salnot, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, has a background in art and anthropology. She was determined to help the women of a Saharawi refugee camp find a way to support themselves and also allow for the women to express themselves artistically by applying design to practical problems.
The process
The bottle cutting tool and nail board via Inhabitat
She developed a relatively simple, low-tech method to create jewelry that utilizes equipment available in the camp – primarily hot sand, a cutting tool and a nail board. Salnot’s bottle project makes use of both natural resources (hot sand) and waste materials (discarded plastic bottles) – she describes the technique below:
“The plastic bottle is first painted and then cut into thin stripes with a cutting tool. After that, any type of drawing can be made by positioning some nails into the holes of a nail board: the plastic stripe is placed all around the nails and the whole is submerged into hot sand. The plastic stripe reacts to the heat by shrinking all along the nail drawing and keeping its shape. The piece of jewelry then requires a few last steps and fittings to become finalized. It is a very simple technique which, however, has the power to make the non-precious become precious.”
Workshop participant setting nails in a nail board
Pouring hot sand over nail board design
Plastic Bottle Project Workshop
Nail board design
You can read more about the technique here. A detailed account of the project here. And Salnot’s website here. The video below is a fascinating look at Salnot’s project and the women this project empowers.
Florie Salnot and the Plastic Bottle Workshop participants
