A letter from me to you.

I grew up in Switzerland for the first 22 years of my life. My parents have always made a lot of things by hand and lived a “sustainable” life without me even realizing that’s what it is. That’s just how we did things. My mom would teach me how to sow and mend garments or re-use old fabric to make a pillow cases for my dolls, for example. We had a 30 minute TV limit per day so we’d spend most of our time outside playing and exploring nature. We almost always cooked meals at home with fresh ingredients from farms around the area (this has not translated well into my adult years because I indeed am a terrible cook), our garden, and we also got bulk grains in re-usable jars from the grocery store. I still remember this because it was always all hands on deck and we had plenty of chores around the house.

Switzerland's recycling system is very well organized and I remember going to the recycling center weekly with my parents. We even separated clear glass, brown glass and green glass. Anyways, I digress but I wanted to start from the beginning.

Now fast forward to 2012. That’s when I moved to the States. To Florida to be exact. And that’s when recycling and being sustainable disappeared off my radar. Not on purpose, not planned, I was just not around it anymore. I still recycled whenever I could but I most certainly did not do the planet any good with my living habits. Until about 2 years ago when I casually asked a friend if she recycles just out of curiosity. And she said “No, I’ve actually never recycled in my life” – this sentence has been stuck with me for 2 years. And it has woken me up again, shook me and told me to do something. To do better.

So I started to very seriously recycle again and tried to educate the people around me on how to start small. The problem with this is recycling on it’s on is not doing much. That message unfortunately did not register with me until the beginning of this year when I started to look into where my trash, paper and plastic ACTUALLY goes. I’m not getting into this but long story short, that’s when I realized that a) I have to reduce what I buy and pay more attention to the beginning of the lifecycle of an item rather than just the end of the cycle and b) I have to find ways to reuse what I already have and give the items new purpose. One day, I ordered a book shelf from target with a gift card I got for Christmas and when it arrived, it came in this huge box with a ton of Styrofoam. I’m not used to Styrofoam. I don’t buy furniture online (thrift stores for life) so when I saw how much material I have to throw out I was shocked. I researched how to dispose of Styrofoam in my area and I was not pleased on what I found. Throw it in the trash, they said. I didn’t and kept it my tiny apartment knowing that I will eventually find a way to re-use. AND I DID! Charmee Celine Atelier was born.

I made my first wall hanging sculpture experimenting with different mediums and it honestly looked sad. The metal picture hooks I used to hang it got all rusty due to the plaster’s moisture or fell out and it just overall looked, uhm, questionable. But I had so much Styrofoam I just kept on going. And tried and tried and tried until I came up with what they are today. In the first month or two I also used leftover Christmas wrapping paper from work functions which now turned into those coupon flyers that you get in the mail that take up space and are usually never used unless you are an extreme coupon-er! I always try to find new things to use that otherwise would have landed in landfills. Now you are probably wondering if I’m still using that same stuff that came with that bookshelf, right? No. I used all of that and had to find new ways to find more styrofoam. This turned out to be extremely EASY. I find Styrofoam EVERYWHERE. Most of the businesses around where I live have plenty - every time I walk into a store and ask if they have leftover styrofoam (including the boxes I use to ship them in) I usually always get a yes. I have gotten some weird looks even after I tell people what I use it for. “Wait so you have a piece of Styrofoam hanging on your wall?” Yes. But no. I obviously try to make it pretty. You will not see any Styrofoam at all. I only use it as a base. With its light nature it’s perfect for hanging. You don’t even need an anker it the wall!