Verónica Sálomon shows the beauty of recycled jewelry

If even nature itself reuses, why don't we do it? That was the question that gave her the last push to investigate how she could create a green line of jewelry by recycling elements such as crystals that come from the oceans, or cardboard, aluminum, plastic or electronic waste.

These are the materials from which the latest costume jewelery collections of the Martalía jewelery are made, which Verónica Sálomon and her mother, Marta Lía Sánchez, opened in Los Ceibos in 2008, and which has been in the Plaza Lagos shopping center.

Verónica Sálomon shows the beauty of recycled jewelry

In the beginning, Marta Lía was the one who made the jewelry, now they have goldsmiths who are in charge of manufacturing. Verónica, following in the footsteps of her mother, is the one who is fully in charge of the green line, from the idea of ​​using these recycled materials to the sketches for each design.

Her curiosity led her to find an online course on sustainable jewelry, and thus contribute to the conservation of the environment from her business, one of her ideals.

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This gave rise to the collections: Collage, in which tetrapak containers are used; sea ​​glass, based on bottle glass thrown away as waste in the sea that is polished with the force of the waves and salt until it becomes crystal; the Living Jewelry, in which they used succulents and air plants that, after showing them off as jewels, had to be planted; and Connections, made with electronic waste.

For the creation of her collections, Verónica even gets involved in obtaining the raw material. She was disarming her computer that she selected the elements for the jewels of Connections, the living jewelery she made with the plants planted in her garden. Now he plans to make a new collection with disused watches that he has begun to disassemble.

Verónica Sálomon shows the beauty of costume jewelery recycled

She's very expressive. His big green eyes that stand out for his bushy dark eyebrows and his short and tousled hair, accompany that uninhibited personality and good sense of humor.

Wearing silver earrings with a fusion of crystals and tetrapak material, this Colombian confesses that her love for nature is a gene that came with her, something she shared with her twin brother Thomás since she was a child.

She says that she arrived here in Ecuador at the age of 7, due to her father's work, and settled with her family.

Living in harmony with nature was the lifestyle of the whole family. In the house there was no shortage of large and leafy mango and eucalyptus trees and pets running around in every corner. “We got to have so many that I have lost count,” he says.

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Verónica graduated as an engineer in Marketing and Advertising at Casa Grande University. Meanwhile, her mother, who was already a textile designer, studied jewelry design and then began making jewelry as a hobby.

Both have a strong bond that translates into a single word: admiration. For Verónica, there is no woman more talented than her mother. "Since I was little, I was dazzled by her talent because there was no item of clothing that I imagined that she couldn't do better."

The jewelry thing started unexpectedly when Verónica was 21 years old and was going to university wearing the earrings that her mother made for her. "My friends asked me to sell them using a phrase: 'Sell them to me, your mom is Martalía,' implying that I had the artist at home who could redo my jewelry at any time," she recalls.

The orders were increasing to the point that Verónica would leave work at lunchtime and go in her car to the companies where her friends worked to show the merchandise, until in 2008 they opened the store in Los Ceibos.

She says that in 2012 they came to Plaza Lagos and had the opportunity to participate in the first edition of the Designer Book, where the theme was Slow Fashion, which promotes the fair treatment of resources to learn how to optimize and reuse them, and that It awoke her interest in applying it to jewelry and that's how she took the distance course on sustainable jewelry. to later take charge of the collections.

In addition to jewelry, Verónica participates in a radio program called Menos es más, where environmental, economic and social sustainability projects are presented, and which is broadcast Monday through Friday on the Tropicana station (96.3), from 13 :00 to 13:30. (F)