Still Here with rainbows in my room

I had this beautiful, mysterious rainbow on my studio ceiling...

it kept me guessing as I ran around touching my many crystals hanging in all my windows ( I was obsessed with Haley Mills and especially the movie PollyAnna...So the crystal fascination is from that movie)...I had to find the one that was causing this amazing and enchanting happening...

It was the CD sitting on my worktable...I had just got it in the mail from a friend in Sturgeon Bay...The CD was by Chris Aaron, an amazing guitarist, blues artist from Madison and associated with the Holiday Music Motel and SteelBridge Songfest ...Chris just passed away two weeks ago .. The rainbow.... eerie but oh so magic.

My time right now seems to full of rest and tv viewing...I am well aware..not very cool  but I think it is just what I need right now...mostly I am watching Netflix and loads of British television ...also I just discovered Doctor Who...I know, where have I been, but I am watching some back series and catching up...I love the show...I'm glad I finally discovered it..so witty clever and great acting...

My Doctor

Hope everyone has a beautiful autumn..  I can finally rest easier ... having made it through the summer...I go kinda crazy in the heat...not my favorite time of the year.

but this is...

Till next time..

xxbh

Belle Armoire Jewelry Magazine June issue...

I am in the Summer edition, June 2014, of Belle Armoire Jewelry magazine.

I remember the days when I would sit in Barnes and Noble, drooling over this magazine...

This was before I even was making jewelry.   Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would one day actually be in it.  And now, this is my fourth time...each time the article is bigger and better...

This time they used a collection of my polymer clay pieces...

Some wrapped up pods

Southwestern inspired disks and handmade beads...

So grab yourself a coffee at your local Barnes and Nobles, pick up this mag and have a look.

And because it's so cool, take it to the counter and buy it...It's an amazing magazine filled with extraordinary work....

Thanks so much to the editor-in-chief, Cynthia Leavens, for her continued support of my work.

My Brocante Days

As many of you know, I used to be a antique dealer.  I turned professional

some 30 years ago ...first by selling almost weekly at various flea markets in the Los Angeles area and

then getting a space at a well known brick and mortar store in Santa Monica, where I stayed for thirteen years...

Well the store closed down...not for lack of business, but because the building was sold to make way for condos...I panicked at the time, wondering what I would do next.   The idea of selling at flea markets again surely did not appeal to me...loading up the car, getting up at ungodly hours in the morning, sitting in the hot sun all day and then at the end of the day packing all that stuff up again...I just couldn't face it anymore.  I looked at various other places to sell and none were very good...I was in one of the best places in the city and nothing would compare to it ....so I decided to retire from the business all together...The store did re-locate, this time in Venice, but my heart was telling me to back off...it was time to retire and move on to something else.

Wertz brothers antique market  santa monica, california

I had spent 30 some years looking, digging, driving, packing, shipping, cleaning and repairing thousands and thousands of things...I was very successful at it and enjoyed it...but the idea of still doing it had lost its glow...It was also getting harder to find things at good prices...prices so good that it warranted shipping the stuff long distances, many times from England and France, at a great cost and lots of wrapping and bubble wrapping to insure its safe arrival here.

I was burnt out...


I had not had a real vacation since I started the business...everywhere I went involved shopping and packing and shipping...the airport was always a nightmare...I remember in the pre 9/11 days of showing up at the airport with 20 boxes of stuff and slipping the skycab some cash for him to break a few rules and get my boxes on that plane....or arriving at Heathrow airport in London, only to be asked by Custom officals to unpack all my suitcases, which I carefully packed so nothing would break ( those were the days that I would bring two empty trunks and fill them up) and then there I was ...sweating bullets, late for the plane, with bubble wrap and literally hundreds of items laying all over the floor...and then I had to pack them up ...again...hellish!

it felt like all I did was shop...

 I still have lots of stuff left....beautiful things...

 Mr. Beatnheart and I have a plan of leaving LA

(although I must confess, I have had that plan for about 40 years now!)  but I know what happens too, after witnessing it many many times, what happens when people get older...You can no longer maintain the big houses, the storage spaces, the garages bursting at the seams...filled with stuff and boxes of things you don't even know what is in them anymore.  I have gone to a thousand estate sales...and those old houses filled to the rafters with things the old folks kept as the houses fell to disrepair...well I want to be pro-active and begin cleaning out my house and my boxes and pass my treasures on to new homes...

give this beautiful weiner dog a home

So I am listing many of my treasures, the things that I have kept in my personal collection,

 in my beatnheartvintage shop on etsy...

I have hung on to many of these things for years because I loved them and

they meant something to me....but now I am ready to let them go...and I 

want to make room in my life for the new things that have meaning...

So stop by the shop...I will be listing almost everyday ( well that is the "Big Plan")

Wish me luck because I'm going to need it...

beatnheartvintage

A Little Torch action...

Beautiful Mr. B helped me this weekend to get my torch set up and it is located in his studio...who would have ever thunk that he and I would be working on metal side by side...certainly not me.
Now that I have taken metalsmithing and have some of the fundamentals down (well more or less) I can speak his language and understand what he is saying to me about how to work the metal...

This was my first attempt...He gave me some lovely old bronze sheet which I texturized using different techniques...the metal was roller printed at school using bits of old border lace.

the ring base was hammered with a texturing hammer 

and then cross filed...

I just plunked the top onto the band and went for it...

then hammered it to the shape of the band...

I got some lumps...but I like them and it's meaningful to me...

I embrace my "mistakes" as you never know what will evolve from them...

 This ring was my next experiment...everything is an experiment at this stage...

First I hammered this rectangular shield shape and used an old made in Paris metal stamp to create the lines, hammered the whole thing on the concrete studio floor and then made the dimples with metal punches...

next came the ring band..thick metal with a cross hatch design..

I have never worn big rings like this but I tell you it feels powerful to

wear a big statement ring on your pointer finger...


This one is close to my heart as it is my first real made by me ring.

I love working in metal, the torch and all the tools....It is a more authentic way

for me to design as there are not as many bits and pieces to deal with...beads, wires, wrapping...

I tended to get all confused and maniacal with all those bits around me and too many choices..

 I love texturizing and hammering metal...and soldering is magic.

Because I know there is more where these came from I have listed this in my Etsy Shop...

It is my first metalsmithing piece in there...big girl pants on!

Shield...bronze ring from Beatnheart

A trip to the Getty...

A trip to the Getty always makes for a beautiful day out...

I love these structures....

rebar with bougenvila growing in them...

Beauty all around...

A perfect day...

If you are ever in Los Angeles, make sure

you visit the Getty Center and also the Getty villa

on the coast...

oh yeah...

some new earrings in the works...

just listed in my Etsy Shop....

Just when you thought I've done everything...

I bet you didn't think of this....

Tonight at 9pm I start taking drum lessons...

Cray zee I know...I'm a middle aged woman...

but it is something I always wanted to do so I thought why not...

The lessons are at the local Parks and Rec...

Boom boom bang

New work...cause I'm tired of destashin....

Well I did a dang good, no, great job of cleaning my studio/kitchen table...

I have pretty much dedicated the whole room to a studio space...I love it..all my little comforts...my favorite pictures, crystals hanging in my southern facing window, rainbows shooting throughout the room...I have Pandora hooked up now too so it is always blasting away... how much do I love Pandora!!  endless hours of listening pleasure that I designed myself and with lyrics and biographies of the artists...bliss!


 The cleaning does continue ....I have drawers to clean out yet...tabletops with crap on them...I have bits and pieces to assign to new places where I can find them without a mad insane search.  All the things that I know I will never use are pretty much at their new homes or are on their way....two destash boxes are still listed ..filled to the brim with good things...They are just not me anymore  When I first started with jewelry making I went cuckoo with supply buying without any plans....so you end up with a lot of things that don't work together...Also my style has changed and basically I love to make everything myself or get it from someone else who does.   I have found that the more stuff I have around me, the more confused and unhappy I am...It takes away from my focus....My AADD kicks in big time and I become frustrated.   The clean up will help to remedy a lot of the problem...I can feel it helping already.  Clean space uncluttered mind.  I am hoping it will help me to get over some of the slumps I have been feeling lately.

So....

Today I made two pairs of earrings on a table that is clean...unreal!  I made one pair, cleaned up the mess, put everything back in its place ...oh man oh man...I hope this keeps up as it feels so friggin good to be organized..                                


I had these beads that I made a couple of weeks ago...  I made them with polymer clay and two molds that I made from old rosary beads....I never made molds before and this is a really great technique especially when you want more than one of one thing...funny how I avoid doing something that I know will be great but just because I've never done it before... I get scared...silly me...more than silly,  downright self-sabotage.

I am pleased with the way these turned out...I did my super distressing technique...they came out looking old, worn, and dull finished ...just the way I like them...Polymer can look shiny, cheap and well, looking like plastic...I hate that...so I work and work on them until that goes away... they end up looking like old wood.  Several layers of paint and then a waxing and buffing.

I used the distressed pewter findings that I have in my shop right now and my steel frames.  I finished off with some tiny little brass Virgin Mary medals... When I want to keep them, I know I done good...

The next pair I did are ones I did before...I love the design and it's one I can do without to much frustration  since I already figured out all that's needed to make them look like this...

wrecked and wasted

These have Scorchedearthonetsy drops, copper tubing, twirly steel wire

and old wooden rosary beads...

The cleaning and destashing continues meanwhile but the light at the end of the tunnel

is enormous...I have still have  a ton of work to do...the garage comes next or maybe my "dressing room"...

and in the words of one of my favorite artists....

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
― William Morris

peace out ...bh.

Will the destashing ever stop?

I have made a new years resolution to clean out my studio.  I have been gathering, collecting, keeping, hoarding and making myself fookin nutzs in the process...everytime I need to find something I can't...every drawer that I open crap falls out all over the place... Something had to be done...had to...this time I really meant it... sooo
                                                               DESTASH BOXES

I'M TAKING PRIORITY BOXES AND LOADING THEM TO MAXIMUM

CAPACITY...

tons of beads from all over the place...

some I've had for 30 years...

bits and bobs and this and thats..

a mere $35 plus shipping gets you a box...

SPARKLE 

Today I found a lovely post on Creative Bead Chat which has a bead drive to send your unwanted jewlery making supplies to this home for girls ...they have a program to help them make some money by making jewelry...well PERFECT!   So the rest is going to them...which makes me feel good and I don't have to take countless more photograps and then list it all on Etsy...feelin fine in the 2014!!!

click here to donate yourself..

bead drive

Meanwhile

this is happening in Los Angeles...

Big giant fire to the east of us...this picture was taken  around noon on Thursday.

Today everything is covered in ash...

we haven't had rain since i don't remember when...

whatta mess...

but when we did get a drop of rain awhile back this happened...

these are all California Poppy shoots...

more than I've ever gotten before...

ought to  be glorious in a month or so...

toodles bh.

I am back...I think.

To the legions of fans who were wondering what the heck has happened to me, well...

I have finally finished my metalsmithing class and wow... was it ever "challenging" to me...

saw these suckers out......

They became this 3-dimensional  riveted bracelet...

a true anguish to make...

Then...

the little brass box...less torture... even some triumph..!

and on to...

THE HOLLOW RING

I am use to staying at home, going to yoga for an hour, coming back and just putzing around my estate....Make some jewelry, putter in the garden, cook something once in awhile, sit on the porch and drink tea, play my uke....that is my day...and I love it...

  It was hard to go to school!  All of my time went into the class and everything else I do in my life just fell away.  My eating, my yoga, cleaning my house, cooking..laundry....no one had socks, pants or shirts.   My husband starting doing the laundry and the man works some 80 hours a week...

second side added

I loved the class and the teacher and the kids in the class especially...so young, so crazy and just everyone was very different and unique...we became a little family and it was cool...

I did learn some great new skills.... 

I can solder and cut and file and bend and roll and tumble and rouge..

I can make paper models and show 20 drawings of stuff I'll never make....

I can make a box, a riveted bracelet and a hollow form ring....

 But most importantly.... I learned that  I love to stay home and do my own thing..!!!! I am so ok now with my life ...I have found things that totally keep me busy and that I have a passion for...I am not lonely or bored...and I love my house, my garden, my yoga, writing and music.

So here's my final project

A Tahitian pearl  

hollow ring....

see the blood!  see the sweat!  see the tears!

This bugger was hard as hell to make but Beatnheart never gives up a fight

so I kept at it until I did it ...The End!

and so onto 2014 

 I am cleaning up the remnants of 2013 on my worktable.

I will be destashing some things in the up and coming days weeks so pop on by the shop if you need any more crap 

beautiful, unique, findings and beads ...

all the best in 2014

my bloggy friends

blessings 

and peace...

xxbh