The Shadow
Cutting thousands of Coca-Cola cans by hand is what Virginia-based jewelry designer Catherine Smith of Trashion Fashion does best.
In fact, it’s necessary in order to make her heart-festooned wristlets because each die-cut piece is different, so no two bracelets are alike.
“Trashion is fun — everyone gets in the spirit of it, sending me cans from all over the world to be fashioned into jewelry,” says Smith.
And when we say thousands, we mean it: The designer also sells heart bracelets from Sprite and Coca-Cola Zero cans.
Her Thesis “An Intol-erable Life My Study of American Mass Consumption,” chronicles our decent into what she dubs a “trash society.”
Catherine has always had an interest in recycling.
“Recycling is great, but I wanted to do something that would make people look at trash differently,” she ex-plained.
As part of her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies thesis she then started making earrings and charm brace-lets out of aluminum soda cans. All of the jewelry is made one piece at a time, first by cutting the cans those cans are then backed and individually die cut to insure just the right capture of artwork for these one-of a kind pieces.
