Ringgg
Etsy shop where you can see all the current Ringgg colors: ringgg.etsy.com
Ringggs are made of coiled telephone cords which have been salvaged and repurposed into jewelry. The colored wires are exactly what you find when you strip off the outer sheathing. Awesome? I think yes.
Discarded industrial materials take up a whole lot of landfill space. Recyclers are doing their part to pull out cords that have copper in them to be processed at a recycling plant, but telephone wire has so little copper in it that it’s not worth a whole lot of money and all that melting costs a lot of energy. Ringggs are a perfect alternative! All of these amazing colored wires were just begging to be in the real world.
Here’s my Summer 2012 Collection which I launched at Opening Day at the SoWa Open Market on Sunday, May 6th 2012. Woo! They’re now up on my etsy site as well.
Here’s the basics on how they’re made:
The section in the middle is left with the sheathing intact to make an adjustable band which circles your finger. The wires retain the spiral shape of the original cord. You can twist and pull on the wires to make a form that you like. It’s kind of like having a mini stress relief toy on your finger that’s durable enough to handle even the most frustrating board meetings.
The different color combinations under the boring, mostly black sheathing, are amazing. Aside from the standard; black, red, green, yellow, there are tropical colors and pastels, flat 90s colors, 80s neons and fancy silverish wire as well as differences in the transparency. The copper wires are coated in a crystal clear plastic.
[...] February of this year (2012), I launched a project called Ringgg and it has been really fun! Everything under the Ringgg brand is made from reused coiled telephone [...]