The stone items are made by a cooperative on the south-western side of Kenya. Their workshop is partly outdoors overlooking the beautiful green hills. The pieces are made in stages.

After mining and hauling the stone to the workshop, the carvers saw the stone into smaller pieces. They hack the rock into the shape of the piece it is to become using machetes!

Then they chisel more definition into the pieces using chisels and other simple hand tools. Here the carver is carving an elephant out of soapstone:

In this video, the carver is making a square dish out of soapstone:

Once they have achieved the rough shape of the item, they pass it along to the sanders. They wet sand the piece until it is perfectly smooth to the touch.

As soon as the pieces are dry, different artisans paint and etch the soapstone. If you run your fingers over your piece, you will feel where the artisans have etched a word or a pattern into the piece.

In this video, you can see the artisan delicately putting the finishing touches on a colorful angel:

Simon and Alice are a married couple who live outside of Nairobi. They and their small team work out of their yard. To make the recycled glass products, they collect glass bottles from bars around their city. They sort them by color (the cobalt blue color comes from Skyy Vodka bottles, the sky blue color comes from Bombay Sapphire bottles, the black color comes from Baileys Irish Cream bottles, and the amber, clear, and green colors come from various beer bottles). Once collected, they wash them and allow them to dry.

After breaking the bottles into small pieces, they put them in the kiln to melt the glass. In this video they are working on our Mommy Vases, but the process is similar for our other recycled glass jewelry pieces.