Hi, I'm Louisa - Welcome to Made, Found & More

A bit more about me!  This whole thing started in lockdown, when I needed to escape the monotony of the same four walls. I needed something quick to make, and I had a stash of vintage tiddlywinks sitting around - I've always loved the colour of them, lovely vintage corals and duck-egg blues; beautiful colours. So, I started experimenting. Turned them into jewellery, then started raiding anything else in the house with a good colour on it - children's scissor handles, bits of old packaging, you name it. I didn't have to buy anything. I already had it all. I just had to work out what it could become.

I've always loved jewellery anyway - genuinely think a good pair of earrings can transform an entire outfit - so making my own felt kind of inevitable. And I love making little things. From a very young age I would make teeny, tiny things out of modelling clay.  I even made my own worry dolls!

I showed some to friends my earrings and they loved them, so I popped a few on Instagram, then set up an Etsy shop, and honestly sold loads through lockdown - everyone was online back then and so they flew out! Then my first ever market was the Boxmoor Trust Autumn Festival. Two days. Sold out both. Turns out I wasn't the only one who could see something special in a handful of old game counters.

Now, the materials - this is the bit I really love. I seem to look at things completely differently to everyone else. If I see something the right shade of pink or coral going in the recycling, it gives me a thrill. An actual thrill. "Ooh, that's a lovely colour" - and it goes in my stash instead of the bin. I think that's the whole thing about me, really - I see beauty and possibility in stuff most people would walk straight past without a second glance. A barcode, a crisp packet, the lid of a sweet tub. If the colour's right, it's not a throwaway item to me. It's raw material.

I've got a full hoard of stuff that should've gone in the recycling years ago - bits of electrical wiring, an old Cadbury's Heroes box (purple, obviously), the backs of playing cards. Honestly, when we moved house, my husband discovered the true scale of it and nearly had a breakdown. Sorry, not sorry!

My style's changed a lot too. I used to see earrings someone else had made and think "oh, I could do a version of that." Now I just make what I want to make - I trust myself a lot more. I reckon that's come from doing markets and fairs, meeting people, having them be genuinely lovely about what I've made. It gives you the courage to keep going.

So it's moved on from just vintage game counters. Now there's necklaces made from recycled climbing rope (from The XC in Hemel), earrings from old Coca-Cola cans and barcodes, and most recently, pieces cut from the lid of a plastic sweet tub. Yes, really. It's not the end of something. It's the start of something else.

I'm stocked at St Albans Museum shop and the Boxmoor Trust shop now. Next on the list: more shops - so if you're a retailer looking for something new and ready to spread the love, drop me a line.

Everything's made by me, by hand, in one-off batches - when they're gone, they're gone.

From my hands to yours.