recycled. handmade. awesomeness.

My name is Cat Ivins and I make really cool new stuff out of really cool old stuff.


I live in a little house at the beautiful Jersey shore.

I have one hubby, one daughter and one dog. My design studio is called Olive Bites (after my pup, who doesn't anymore) where I design and create 2 sustainable and recycled jewelry lines called Uncorked Jewelry® and Polarity Lockets® - the original magnetic interchangeable jewelry sold on Etsy since 2007!

My Uncorked jewelry is made with cork bark that is hand-harvested in Portugal (without harming the cork oak trees) and is upcycled in my NJ studio into something handmade and beautiful and totally unique.

I also recycle corks for many bars at the Jersey Shore - luckily for me we have a lot of them! And people from all over the planet send me their corks - luckily for me I have alot of friends who really, really like to drink.

My cork obsession began with a wine cork hubs and I saved from the first night we spent in our new house. Being the crafty goddess I am I pulled out a super thick red magic marker I had used for our packing boxes and wrote NEW HOUSE on it (wasn't I clever?).

Corks were soon filling every drawer and every closet and every nook and cranny until it was either make something or stop drinking wine (note- we did not stop drinking wine).

I began collecting lockets when my favorite uncle gave me an Alice in Wonderland bracelet locket which I promptly lost in the schoolyard on the first day of 2nd grade

(this left me crying and demanding a lockdown of the school grounds - my teacher refused to search my classmates' pockets and lunchbags - a situation I later blamed for my growing distrust of authority figures and inability to work a wrist strap)

Many years later while wandering around my hubby's truck repair shop looking for a place to sit that wasn't covered in brake dust I spied a drawer full of used, blackened auto plugs that began to call my name.

Hubs said "Cat, girls don't want to wear steel, girls want gold and silver and things that are shiny and new" and I said, " well ... maybe not all girls" ..

I began experimenting (when I realized my car parts were magnetic I almost had a coronary - luckily Olive has been trained in CPR and is fast on her feet), took a welding class and VOILA - in a noisy garage at the Jersey Shore the magnetic Polarity Locket was born!

I now collaborate with the most amazing artists on the planet for my locket artwork and over 20,000 magnetic lockets have been attracting love and abundance for their owners - magnetic lockets are magical by the way - since 2007 all handmade in the same Jersey garage by ME (with a little help from Olive) and equal doses of love and propane.

the Polarity Locket becomes scent-sational ....

Last year, while undergoing acupuncture for some health challenges, I began experimenting with aromatherapy. I could see pretty quickly that scent had a powerful impact on my moods and emotions and my moods and emotions had a powerful impact on what happened to me and how I responded.

I wanted to be able to use scent during the day without carrying a bulky liquid and without wearing the scent on my body (I've always been the kind of person who's perfume evaporates almost immediately anyway) since my aromatherapy scent is just for me.

I re-invented my locket for aromatic use and started giving them out to friends and family - everyone loved them! A friend who's son has autism was able to use her locket as part of his aromatherapy treatment, another friend who's boyfriend had joined the military used her locket to hold his scent and got him a locket to hold hers, an elderly aunt discovered that Demeter's fragrance line with the quirky names and scents was just what she needed with her afternoon meditation break and green tea and the kids all loved changing lids and scents to fit their moods.

I want to deliver a unique view of something we have all seen before and hopefully get everyone thinking about new ways of seeing and using some of the other things in our lives. I hope you enjoy my work as much as I have enjoyed making it! 

 

My name is Olive Ivins. I am what happens when a boston terrier falls in love with a beagle.

Some people call me a Boggle; some people call me the "M" word.

(we don't use the 'm' word around here, although it may be the only 4 letter word we don't use- this is Jersey after all).

I spend my days on the arm of a stuffed chair in Cat's studio dangling over the heater. Sometimes, I jump up and bark at random things- like the mailman or the wind or the other cat (the one who lives across the street and walks around off leash all day to really drive me crazy). But, mostly I just hang around here and provide the kind of inspiration that only a 15 pound brindled Boggle has to offer.