Branford craftsman makes Christmas trees from grandma’s old jewelry

“My pact with myself is that everything was going to be recycled,” she said. “If I had to do something, it would be from something else.”

So, Abalan collected old brooches, colorful buttons, interesting earrings, multi-colored beads, and small bows and tassels to create brooches collages. Each is as unique as a single snowflake.

Bretta Buckingham was one of Abalan’s clients at her very first show at the recent Sip and Shop event at the Pine Orchard Yacht and Country Club.

“It’s smart, it’s smart,” Buckingham said. “She is incredibly talented. My eyes knew exactly where to go.

“I love this room. I love this piece, ”she recalls, as she browsed Abalan’s exhibition“ It’s framed, it’s beautiful. It will be at the center of my place in Manhattan.

Buckingham, who grew up in the area and still has family and friends along the shore, was also impressed that all materials are recycled.

“Everything is recycled,” she says. “This is how we should be.

Even the medium for the collage is recycled from pillow covers, clothing, and found materials, such as velvet, and the frames are all made from different materials, all discovered during his travels.

“I love to mix the industrial with the delicate,” said Abalan, holding a metal frame around one of his colorful and sparkling collages.

“What I think about when I put them together is what they look like, aesthetically,” she said. “I try to mix colors and balance.”

Art is important to Abalan. Over the years, she has tried her hand at watercolors, wool felting, creative birdhouses and now brooch collages. In the 1990s, she was an art professor at the Creative Arts Workshop and the Guilford Art Center. Spindle parts have been his main focus for the past two years.

Her art helps her unwind after a busy day, commuting to a job at an audiovisual company in New York City.

“I have to have a creative outlet,” she said sitting in her living room turned into a studio. “It relaxes my brain. This prevents him from thinking about work. It keeps him from thinking of anything negative. I like the color. I love the textures.

In her busy schedule, she finds time to do something creative every day.

“So I started making art out of old jewelry or whatever it was,” she said. “I had old earrings. My mother gave me earrings that belonged to my grandmother and that I would never wear – costume jewelry. It was cool, but it was things I would never wear, so I started doing things.

There were also other sources of inspiration.

“I was at Sarah’s Cupboard and saw more and had a party for my daughter once,” she said. “It was a costume party with costume jewelry and I just started to integrate it.”

Originally made as gifts, Abalan now has an Etsy store called GrandloveTreasures and would like to expand their business into personal creations for people who have jewelry they would like to keep in a work of art.

“I want people to come to me and say, ‘My grandmother left me with all this jewelry. I will never wear it, can you do something with it so that I can remember her, to hang it in my house, ”the artist said.

One idea, to percolate, is to make collages of brooches in the shape of bouquets. She knows that adding brooches to bridal bouquets is popular and she plans to take those pins, follow the wedding, and create an everlasting keepsake for the brides.

Abalan’s mother, Barb Abalan, received one of her daughter’s very first brooch collages, created from heirlooms. The brooches, once worn by Barb Abalan’s mother and grandmother, are now kept forever and hung in her bedroom in Portland, Oregon.

“My grandma was a knitter so she wore these beautiful knit suits and she always had brooches when we went on vacation, and even just there during the day,” she said. “I think she cleaned her house in these things.”

It was in the early 1950s when brooches were a real fashion statement and now Barb Abalan can be remembered through collage.

“It reminds me of so many amazing memories,” she said. “I loved being with my grandmother. “I think of the wonderful memories we had. I sat at the bottom of her chair as she crocheted. It’s just such a wonderful piece of history.

This is exactly the feeling Abalan hopes for when people see his works.

“It’s taking something old, and maybe not as aesthetic, and putting it into a new piece of art that has a new story,” she said. “Each brooch has a story.”

For more information, contact Kristin Abalan at abalank67@gmail.com; 203-889-6000 or visit her Etsy store at GrandloveTreasures.