HILTON HEAD TEACHER RECYCLES MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS INTO JEWELRY BY SHERRY CONOHAN | PHOTO BY CHARLES GRACE
Tara Caron doesn’t look at magazines and newspapers the way most people do. Instead of sizing up the stories offered to determine which to read first, she goes right to the pages filled with colorful pictures — because she’s looking for the hues that work best in her jewelry. That photo of a garden scene or that crazy comic strip can be made into beads that can be strung into beautiful bracelets and earrings in an amazing mix of color. A teacher by training and a naturalist by instinct, she loves not only making the jewelry but the recycling aspect of it. The paper in each publication comes from a tree, and by turning that paper into something useful, “it gets to live on,” she said. Caron, a third-grade teacher at Hilton Head Island Elementary School for Creative Arts, took up jewelry-making two years ago and has tried her hand at selling it at farmers markets and the like, but found that unsatisfactory. “People just wanted to eat and watch the fireworks,” she said. Luckily, she now has an opportunity to display her jewelry in a store. Beginning this month, some of her pieces will go on sale at artWare, which recently moved from Main Street Village on Hilton Head to the new Shelter Cove Towne Centre. Caron uses shish kabob skewers to make her jewelry. She wraps the colored paper around the skewers, first in the shape of a rectangle then in the shape of a triangle, and glues it. She uses an embossing dabber, then sprinkles a power and dries it with a dryer similar to a hair dryer, with the heat determining the color. “I never know how the color is going to come out,” Caron said. She recently made some beads with a nail polish lacquer and found that technique resulted in brighter colors, which she liked. 80 hiltonheadmonthly.com
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