Recycled Armadillo

We are two sisters that grew up in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast, in a house where our parents loved to entertain. At the center of it all was a bar — a place for stories, laughter, and long conversations. At some point (thanks to a joke gift from our mom), a stuffed (taxidermy) armadillo appeared… then another, this one a sculpture…then perhaps a toy armadillo, and so on. Before l

ong, armadillos were everywhere, and the space earned its name: the Armadillo Bar. One of us returned home to help care for our parents alongside the other, a registered nurse. That year, we lost both of them. In the middle of grief, stress, and exhaustion, we were desperate for a healthy way to release everything we were carrying. So we created our own. Over the years, bottles from the Armadillo Bar had been saved in a greenhouse. One day, those bottles became our “rage room” — safely smashed, not wasted. Nearby sat an old rock tumbler from a long-forgotten hobby. Out of curiosity, we tumbled the glass to see what would happen. What came out looked like sea glass — smooth, colorful, and unexpectedly beautiful. From there, creativity took over. We experimented, designed, and eventually made our first wind chimes. They were lovely. Meditative. Healing. Soon we were making them constantly and gifting them to friends and family as a way to share memories of our parents, our home, and the Armadillo Bar. Eventually, everyone we knew had wind chimes — and we were still making more. That’s when Recycled Armadillo was born. Today, each wind chime we make is crafted from recycled glass and shaped by hand, carrying a little bit of transformation with it — from stress to beauty, from memory to motion, from something broken to something that sings. We’re honored to share our craft with you and hope our wind chimes bring peace, light, and a gentle reminder that beautiful things can come from unexpected places.

— The Recycled Armadillo