disposable retail price tags are reimagined as copper and enamel pins

retail price labels become collectible copper and enamel pins

Precious Price Tag Pins transforms the familiar price label, an everyday symbol of consumer culture, into a series of wearable and collectible objects. Following her viral project Oyster card acrylic nails, artist Lucie Davis’ new work examines how value can be reassigned to an overlooked object through material transformation, repetition, and craft.

The series combines laser engraving with traditional hand enameling, bringing together digital precision and kiln-fired finishing techniques. Each pin begins as a metal cutout that is laser engraved with the graphic details of a price label before being finished with vitreous enamel. The pieces are fired in a kiln to produce a glossy, permanent surface, with variations in temperature and firing time deliberately introduced during the process.

The firing experiments included under-firing and over-firing individual pieces to observe how changes in temperature affected the enamel surface. These variations produce differences in color, texture, and finish, with some outcomes occurring through the unpredictability of the kiln. Before firing, the corners of the copper cutouts are hammered to create small deformations that suggest the appearance of a sticker beginning to peel away from a surface.

price labels become collectible copper and enamel pins by Lucie Davis | all images ©Lucie Davis

each pin preserves the imperfections of the original price label

The project grew out of designer Lucie Davis’s familiarity with retail price labels while working in a shop during university. Repeated exposure to the stickers drew attention to their printing marks, creases, bends, and other traces of handling. The series collects and reproduces these details as part of the design, transferring the visual characteristics of disposable retail labels into more permanent objects.

Each pin is made from copper with laser-engraved, kiln-fired enamel and is fitted with a tie tack pin and silver clasp. Variations in the engraving, metal deformation, and firing process mean that no two pieces are identical. The resulting differences give each object a distinct surface and appearance while retaining the visual language of the original price label.

The pins can be worn individually as jewelry or displayed together as a collection. When grouped, their repetition and accumulation reference the mass-produced stickers from which the series takes its form, while the transformation into enamel and copper objects introduces a different form of material and monetary value.

the pins are laser-engraved, then kiln-fired, finished with a silver-plated tie-tac pin and clutch

printing marks and creases are retained as part of the design

copper and enamel give disposable graphics a more permanent form

each pin carries its own combination of marks, bends, and textures

hammered corners mimic the edges of a peeling price sticker

kiln-fired enamel gives the engraved surfaces a glossy finish

each packaged in its own box, retail price labels are reinterpreted as wearable objects

project info:

name: Precious Price Tag Pins
designer: Lucie Davis | @luciedavis

materials: Laser-engraved, (kiln-fired) enamel, silver-plated tie-tac pin and clutch

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. See more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: Christina Vergopoulou | designboom