We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Susan Jenkins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Susan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I am a self-taught jewelry maker. My motivation and passion has always been about reducing waste and finding interesting, unique ways to reuse and/or repurpose items that end up in the trash.

Because I am an avid cyclist, I was very concerned that I was irresponsibly adding to the landfill with my discarded tire tubes. After awhile I started collecting everyone’s tire tubes knowing that I could do something with them. As we all do, I googled what can you do with tire tubes and found a variety of ideas. Based on what I was seeing, I wanted to add color and have been experimenting with a lot of different type of paints and sealers.

I often think that if I had only taken more art and jewelry classes I would be further along but honestly, I love the challenge of experimenting and teaching myself. Because tire tubes are a different type of material there really is not a lot of information available. It certainly has been a challenge but when I solve a problem on how to accomplish what I want it has been very rewarding. The most important skill has been persistence. By continuing with trial and error, each mistake brings on other ideas leading to some interesting creations. Because my desire is to reduce waste, I challenge myself to throw away as little as possible by finding interesting ways to use the scraps.

The biggest obstacle in learning has been finding time to do it all. As with everyone, I am juggling way too much. I try to balance creativity, time in nature, spending time with my new rescue dog, connecting with family and friends, marketing, making (production & research for new items), maintaining a small business and oh yeah, the most stressful of all, earning a living!

Susan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been an amatuer athlete for all of my adult life from running in road races and competing in triathlons to cycling, practicing yoga and rock climbing. Life has been so much sweeter and obviously, healthier with living an active lifestyle.

As for most of us, I am quite worried about global warming and the overflowing landfills. Because I feel so grateful for the beautiful vistas that our country has to offer and just the feeling of freedom as the wind touches my skin while cycling, I struggled with what can I personally do to make a small difference to protect our earth and preserve it for our future generations?

Out of frugality and wanting to be environmentally conscientious, I reused, repurposed and recycled as much as possible throughout my adult life. A couple of years ago while biking, either myself or friends had a number of flat tires during long rides. I saved the tire tubes not wanting to throw them away. After a lot of research, I discovered great tutorials and many artists who are definitely doing their part to repurpose tire tubes! They were my inspiration to make lightweight, colorful earrings to promote an active lifestyle and reduce waste through reusing, repurposing and recycling. Cycle Up Jewelry Plus was born!

The Mission for Cycle Up Jewelry Plus is to create a community to support each other to reuse, repurpose, recycle to reduce the waste that we humans produce AND to promote, uplift an active lifestyle. The hope is that these fun, colorful, lightweight earrings that don’t necessarily look like what they originally were, are a product that you feel good about buying/wearing OR that you are motivated to do your part to reduce waste and live a healthy, active lifestyle!

: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

As stated before, my mission in life and in business is to refuse, reduce and reuse as much as possible because I am so concerned with global warming and the state of our environment.

Personally, I try to not buy anything in plastic which is quite difficult. Most of my groceries are from a business called Imperfect Foods that fight food waste and only deliver in one area a day to reduce carbon emissions. I eat a plant based diet for health and environmental reasons. For most household & beauty supplies, I shop at a local refill shop (JoyFill) to reuse my own glass containers by refilling vinegar, dish soap, laundry detergent, etc. or buy cosmetics that are in compostable packaging. I also try to dress in as many sustainable fabrics or buy second hand clothing. Another way that I try to keep my footprint small is whenever possible bike to locations instead of driving.

As a business, I consciously choose packaging for my jewelry that is reusable, recyclable or compostable. When doing pop-up markets, the majority of supplies for displays are purposely second hand to maintain the mission of reducing, reusing and repurposing as a lifestyle as well as trying to minimize waste. Of course, the jewelry itself is repurposing discarded, flat tire tubes.

Of course this mission IS the creative journey personally and in business. Do I make mistakes? Do I have plastic in my life? Could I do better? Yes, but it is a process. I hope that Cycle Up Jewelry Plus can be that inspiration for each of us to be more conscious of our own impact on the earth. If we were all to make small changes and demand that large companies make eco-friendly changes, that little ripple in the pond, would make a huge difference. So in the meantime, jewelry from Cycle Up Jewelry Plus can be that reminder and inspiration.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

For the last eight months I’ve had to pivot, even pause my business. A major family event caused me to lay low during the holiday season of 2021, my dog of 14 years died and to survive financially, I added a second part-time nanny position to my other part-time nanny position. All of this caused me to step back and re-evaluate my life as well as whether Cycle Up Jewelry Plus is a viable business with desirable products.

With the loss of my dog who had been a part of so much of my life from a divorce to traveling and even moving cross country to being my hiking buddy, I found myself at a loss without him. After three months, I knew I needed another furbaby. I found a sweet little dog who has really rescued me instead of the other way around. A month later my son and now daughter-in-law got married in San Diego on the beach. I brought Buddy with me because it was just too early to leave this scared, hopeless little guy with a sitter. Because he would be attending the wedding, it only made sense that he would have a bowtie. This was the start of tire tube bowties for furbabies. The hope is that the bowties will evolve into a new product line with a wider appeal.

While I would prefer to only sell my products on cycleupjewelryplus.com, I have found that wholesale is doing better. The plan is to create furbaby bowties, more unique and light earrings and bracelets that are handmade, repurposed from tire tubes and sell them in small shops throughout Denver initially and then throughout Colorado. But ultimately, I have decided that sharing the mission of living a healthy, eco-friendly lifestyle is paramount. Of course building Cycle Up Jewelry Plus to be a successful business would be the best and is the goal, having more people choose to do more commuting by bicycle, refusing to buy plastic when possible, be eco-friendly shoppers and be more conscious of their impact on our Mother Earth is my aspiration.

Contact Info:

• Website: cycleupjewelryplus.com
• Instagram: @cycleupjewelryplus
• Facebook: Cycle Up Jewelry Plus
• Other: Shop at Joy Fill, 4340 W 35th Ave in Denver to shop for products from Cycle Up Jewelry Plus