Tutorial Tuesday--Upcycled jewelry from 'round the internet

Using recycled or hardware parts for jewelry is a perennially popular DIY move (this is because it is awesome). 

I'm working on some jewelry with copper plumbing fixtures myself, at the moment (more on which later). 

For some inspiration, here are a few 'round the internet tutorials I've been collecting. 

Here are some pendants made with pipe fittings, plastic bottle caps, and vintage buttons. This project uses no soldering; the buttons are sewn in place. I could also see this working will with a lot of other materials, or by using hammered rivets instead to hold everything together. The tutorial is by Catherine Ivins, and is available over here.

Here's a tutorial for a really simple idea with great potential and impact: stamping steel washers, then applying a patina to them with permanent marker ink. Courtesy of The 36th Avenue blog, and available here.

This tutorial, courtesy of Melissa Espin, shows you how to use leather scraps to create a long wraparound bracelet. This is another idea with a lot of potential for variation, especially for that center portion, which I can imagine being made of embroidered fabric, or metal, or gem beads. Tutorial is over here.

I've seen fused plastic bags around in a lot of forms, including wallets, tote bags and other containers. But the lightweight material could also work very well in a jewelry context. Portland actually recently expanded its plastic bag ban to most stores over a certain size (woot!), so it's getting a little bit harder to come across a hoard of these. Still, this is a project I'd love to try at some point. The tutorial linked is by Leigh Ann of Freckled Nest; click here.