This ‘Madraskaari’ upcycles scrap into quirky jewellery

With a great passion for handicrafts, she always dreamt of creating her own identity. This led her to start a venture called Madraskaari. This start-up upcycles and repurposes available materials from our daily lives, such as scrap fabrics, soda cups, safety pins, paper, spools of colourful threats, etc. With these materials, she makes handcrafted rings, pendants and bracelets.

With upcycled accessories becoming a huge trend, Nidhi says that it is a noble thought to upcycle from our own stash. “That will reduce a lot of junk being discarded and act as a good idea to create sustainable fashion, which will go a long way,” she says.

Explaining the jewellery making procedure, Nidhi shares, “The process of making each piece of art varies and is completely different from the other. Some may need melting and heating the metal base, while others would need simple gluing. There is no particular material I go look for. I hoard a lot of scrap fabrics — I collect them after I get my clothes made from my tailor and I make sure I get the leftovers. Also, I collect metal washers, safety pins, bottles of different sizes and shapes, colourful magazines, etc. Most of my artworks are inspired by what I see around me. Sometimes it's the colours of the flowers in my garden and sometimes it's my own ideas and thought processes.”

The designer/artist has faced a lot of challenges while creating an art piece. “It’s a huge challenge to make each piece durable, sturdy and good enough to put them to use in our day-to-day life. For example, I make lamps and serving trays using a lot of magazine papers and paints and I take extra care to put them through several levels of tests to make sure the trays are water and heat resistant so that, you can easily clean when something spills,” she remarks.