uncorked

My name is Catherine (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®.

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?).

This NEW HOUSE cork was soon joined by PORTLAND VACATION and ANNIVERSARY and NEW BABY (well, truthfully the baby came first, but this way makes a better story).

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 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!