Bicycle Inner Tube Jewelry: Tour de France

The "Tour de France" wristlet

The third creation fashioned from a single bicycle inner tube. (Scroll down or follow this link — bicycle inner tube — to see the earlier two projects.) This wristlet was made by slitting vertically along one of the inner tube ribs and opening the tube out flat. A search through a button collection surfaced a handful of alphabet buttons and a vintage button depicting the Eiffel Tower. The image is on paper covered by a dome of celluloid.

Click to enlarge

After cutting off a length that easily circled my wrist with a little left over, the ends were rounded off. The "Z" button on one end serves as an actual button to fasten the wristlet. A small slit on the other end cut with an Exacto knife serves as a buttonhole. Happily, the cut doesn't travel or widen no matter how much pressure I apply when buttoning the piece.

Buttonhole slit

The final wristlet in action:

Front

Back

The gorgeous vintage button that makes the piece

Bicycle Inner Tube Textile Patches

Bicycle inner tube cut-outs on recycled shirt

An alternative title for this piece might be, "How to Hack a Villager Shirt." If you grew up in the American suburbs in the late '50s/early '60s and were forced into the lock-step fashion regimen of circle pins, Villager clothing and kilt pins, then you'll understand the desire to tackle a Villager shirt and make it a bit more edgy. This is one of a series of projects all created from a single bicycle inner tube (see Bicycle Inner Tube Jewelry for the first project). Materials: Used Villager shirt from thrift store for $1; section of bicycle inner tube; glue stick; needle and thread.

Original, unembellished cotton shirt

I wanted to do a rabbit-in-the-moon motif (if you view the moon from near the equator, it looks like there is a rabbit on the moon, which has spawned a lot of moon and rabbit related folklore). The first step was to print out a bunch of rabbit, moon, and stars images gleaned through a Google image search. After slitting open the inner tube, I glued the images to the rubber (use a glue stick and the paper just washes right off afterwards) and cut them out. I cut circles out of the scraps.

Cutting out the rubber shapes

Stars and circles were attached with a single "X" stitch. Leaving edges free creates a kind of 3D effect. The rabbits have a couple of stitches up their length to prevent them curling back into the shape of the inner tube.

The finished product: a thoroughly hacked Villager shirt.

Front

Back

Bicycle Inner Tube Jewelry

Gingko leaf necklace

The next few posts on this blog involve various experiments, all fashioned from a single bicycle inner tube. I've seen the sort of slashed, punked-out necklaces made out of inner tubes before which have their own Mad Max kind of charm, but I wanted to try for something more delicate.

Materials: inner tube, found red wire

Because inner tube rubber is so pliant and soft, you can not only cut it into fairly intricate shapes you can also sew it — in this case with a darning needle and some found red wire from a spool gifted to me by a friend who knows I like intriguing junk and materials.

Rubber gingko leaves

After drawing leaves directly onto the rubber with a ballpoint pen, I cut them out with a pair of small needlework scissors that enable delicate cutting.

Stitching rubber leaves

Happily, the rubber "grabs" the wire, so you can move the leaves up and down the wire, arrange them where you want, and they'll stay in place.

Sewn leaves

The final necklace is lighter than air. I like using a gingko leaf motif on a recycled materials necklace because the gingko is one tough tree, ancient and able to survive the pollution and vicissitudes of modern urban life. It's a survivor during an era of species extinction.

Recycled Rubber Bags: The Clutch

The last rubber bag in this series and one of my favorites—a small clutch. The clasp is magnetic, but the clasp decoration is a smashed lightbulb housing. For the back story on the rubber bags see this post.

Recycled Rubber Bags: Guess What!

For back story on rubber bags see this post. Below we have a bag that incorporates a print I made of a vintage postcard I found in an antique barn on the Jersey Shore. I love the mystery of the story behind the card. The date is 1944 in the middle of World War II. It's sent from San Francisco. What's your guess?

Front of bag with inset postcard image depicting Golden Gate Bridge

Back of bag

Close-up of message side of postcard (click to enlarge)

Recycled Rubber Bags: First Responders

More recycled rubber handbags. For the backstory see the original post here. The following are from the "first responder" series; all include inserts with first aid instruction from various sources.

Insert with graphic from Chinese first aid manual.

Insert with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation technique.

Insert from Chinese first aid manual. 

Again, it's the wear patterns on the rubber that really make the bag. Note the pebbled effect from road wear on the middle bag. The inserts are protected with a top layer of clear vinyl, and backed with a panel of rubber and then stitched into the bag. The security people at airports always stop me to discuss these bags. They seem to love them.

Recycled Rubber Handbags

An obsession of mine for a while, and I find that you have to keep experimenting with just about anything before you get it exactly right. Thus the plethora of recycled rubber handbags in my wardrobe. 

These are made from recycled truck tire inner tubes. After experimenting with studs and rivets I finally settled on using a hand awl and sewing them together for the best and most durable results. Most of the clasps and D-rings (used to attach the shoulder strap) came from a bin at the Depot for Creative Reuse for about 25 cents each.

You use the natural curve of the tire and the bags pretty much make themselves (after you do a little geometry and math). What makes the rubber more interesting is the wear pattern, printing, and patching.

In subsequent posts I'll show close-ups of bags that reflect more creative playing around. Where do I get the rubber? If you've got an art car and drive out to the industrial netherlands of East or West Oakland to a station that services semi-trucks, the grizzled guys who work there tend to believe you when you say you want some old, unusable truck inner tubes destined for the waste pile for art. They let me pick and choose whatever I want for free. Heavy duty preliminary washing of the rubber is required before crafting can proceed.