Hawaii Artist Heather Brown and Green With Aloha Reclaimed Wood Frames from the North Shore of Oahu

Aloha Everyone!

I have just finally added better pictures and organization to our frames section on our website!
If you have not seen the frames that we make at our studio on the North Shore of Oahu, I will explain a little.

A few years ago, me and my husband Chris started a small company called "Green with Aloha". We basically started this because we would see little things that we knew we could make more re-usable or from using reclaimed and recycled materials. We started out very small as these were not business decisions for us, these were lifestyle decisions for us personally and for the people closest to us and we wanted to start showing that we can all make small changes that can have BIG effects worldwide. Our first product was the "Green with Aloha" Diamond Head tote bag that was printed using all water based inks on a recycled cotton bag made here in the USA. The bag itself has proven to be almost bomb proof and we have been using our same set of bags since the very first printing run almost 4 years ago now! We moved on to other production products like out re-usable beverage containers and glasses to more specific and custom furniture products and framing options for my art.

Chris has been a lifetime woodworker/boatbuilder/furniture maker, wood artist, etc so when we would receive emails and requests for framing, Chris would be happy to oblige, and go to his woodshop and create the most beautiful frames I have ever seen using nothing but reclaimed and recycled woods that he would pick up when they would tear homes down on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii and Waikiki. Well, within months, it seemed that Chris would be working on frames from dawn to way past dusk and the frames became a huge hit. We would collaborate on frame designs and color choices going to second hand lumber resources and craigslist to find second hand water based paints that people didn;t want any more. We would spend hours like chemists in the lab mixing our very own unique colors from all the paint we would pick up and we would layer the paints how we would see fit to best compliment my art. Fast forward a couple of years and Green with Aloha has begun to walk on it's own legs and we are producing more frames than ever while keeping what some call "rubbish" out of the landfills.

Recently, the Green with Aloha team has tripled in size (3 of us now!!) due to demand. Our great friend  Alex has been sourcing all of our wood (which is now about 90% old pallet wood, you know the wood used to transport all the goods we use in Hawaii from the mainland USA and other parts of the world. This wood is stacked all over our Islands and will all end up in landfills that we don't even have!!) In the past year, we estimate that we have saved over 7,000 pallets from ending up in the trash!! Alex also has taken our designs and puts together the "blanks" that we then take and make pretty! Once the frame blank is made, it goes to our paint and sand studio where Chris and our other great friend Mark come up with the great colors and textures that you see in the final product. Each and every frame is made 100% by hand in Hawaii by real people (no sweat shops, poorly paid labor or bad working conditions here!!)  We finalize the product with high quality uv resistent plexiglass and recycled metal hanging hardware. We are so proud of our product and we hope you love them and see them as a great way to compliment your Heather Brown art or anything else needing a unique 1 of a kind frame.

We just recently started doing some carvings and branding's on some of our frames too, be sure to check them all out on my website www.HeatherBrownArt.com under "Iphone cases, Frames, Etc"

Check out some of the pictures below taken by Keri Cooper, clicking on any of the pictures will take you directly to my website where you can see more of the frames in this collection.