Spotted: Painted Brooches Made from Fallen Tree Limbs

These sweet little brooches are hand-painted on reclaimed wood and sealed with all natural oil!

One of my favorite ways to kill some time on an evening in is doing a little Team Eco Etsy fantasy shopping. I know, my life is full of thrills, right? What I love about Team Eco Etsy is that it's a curated group of crafters who use reclaimed, organic, and otherwise eco-friendly materials, so when you use their tag on searches, it helps narrow things down to the eco-minded crafts you're after.

The tag, which you can add to any search is teamecoetsy. I wanted to see what the team was up to for fall, so I searched fall teamecoetsy to find pages of beautiful fall art, jewelry, and clothing that's all eco-friendly!

These sweet wooden brooches from ReGrow Roots caught my eye for a couple of reasons. I love the rustic, natural look of the hand-painted wood, but I also don't think this is a shop I've run across before.

Artist Desiree Fleck, the woman behind ReGrow Roots, hand-paints each piece of wood and uses natural linseed oil to finish it. Linseed oil comes from flax seeds, and this natural oil is leaps and bounds better than the petroleum-based resins and epoxies that's used to finish most wood jewelry.

Fleck explains in her product listings that because linseed oil is not chemically-derived, your jewelry will last longer if you reapply every year or so. She says:

Linseed oil is an all natural product derived from the oil of flax seeds and is also known as flaxseed oil. Because it is all natural, the wood will absorb the oil and lighten over time. To ensure longevity of your fabulous brooch, you can reapply oil once a year or so. Any oil works - olive oil, grapeseed, pumpkin seed, canola oil... etc.

Not too bad, right? So you spend 2-3 minutes once a year rubbing a little cooking oil on your brooch, and you get a totally unique, reclaimed piece of wearable art that's much kinder to the planet than the store-bought stuff. You can find Fleck's hand-painted brooches in the ReGrow Roots Etsy shop!