By Kimberley Mok / Source: TreeHugger

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Many of us might have found great pleasure during childhood roaming around outdoors, exploring and collecting small treasures from nature: leaves, rocks, feathers and shells. Of course, with the passage of time, many of these treasures eventually decay. But it doesn’t have to be so: Oregonian Sarah Smith seems to have taken this pastime to artistic heights with her beautifully crafted resin jewelry, which preserve these little reminders of nature as perpetual marvels.

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Smith, who handcrafts each piece from start to finish, collects her specimens from the Pacific Northwest coast. She’s pretty experimental in what she uses: there are the usual leaves and flowers, as well as other more surprising subjects like birch bark, local sand, moss, mini-mushrooms and even peacock feathers (obviously not native to Oregon, but these are pretty).

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Smith creates a variety of wearable items, from bracelets to earrings to pendants to rings. Each one is hand-poured and can take up to three weeks to cure, so Smith notes that “because each piece is made by hand and not a machine, tiny bubbles, bumps and slight imperfections are part of the unique characteristics of the jewelry.”

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Nature is full of beauty everywhere, and these unique, carefully made gems elevate what seems to be ‘ordinary’ to a level of preciousness and wonder that we might not only find in jewelry, but in the everyday appreciation of nature. More over at Modern Flower Child and Etsy.

Read more @ TreeHugger