For the Love of Great Big Obnoxious Necklaces

I have a really difficult time reigning it it and creating delicate and simple, everyday type jewelry. I do try...but chains and beads and random weirdness keep adding themselves to my mannequin as I work and bizarre conceptual ideas refuse to be kept down. I think there might be something wrong with me.

The good news is, I very rarely use anything new to create these big, obnoxious (FANTABULOUS!) pieces. I hit up garage sales, antique malls, flea markets, my friends give me their broken things...I love the idea of recycling and I'm even more fond of creating something recycled that doesn't really look recycled. Hopefully I'm succeeding :)

A little obsessed with sea anemones the day this was born:



I wanted to create a big, fairytale, woodsy necklace that would make people talk about the girl who was wearing it...in a good way, of course:


The circles on this one? Old curtain ties from the seventies - seriously. I came across a huge bag of them, in all of their macrame, 1970's goodness. I used vintage seam binding and thrifted ribbon to wrap them, and combined various beads and chain links to finish it off. Did I mention how much I love pink and green? Because I love the combination so much that I made two versions of this:


Pearls and punk rock:


I have these moments where I feel very Frida Kahlo-ish...Or maybe more Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo. Either way, sometimes I need to wear a big and vibrant necklace just like this:


These were all created by me and can be found at my online shop here (www.shopheylola.com)

Do you make new things from old things? Let me know - I'd love to feature you here!

I'm in the LA Times today!

I know I'm supposed to be all blase about this sort of thing and act really cool and I actually lived in LA for about a year which should make me even more relaxed and cool about this whole thing...but I'm not. I'm so unbelieveably flattered and honored and thrilled that I just danced around my house for a really, really long time. Anyway, the internet is going to devour this article in about a week so I'm saving the whole thing here so I can revisit it whenever I feel the need to dance. Unfortunately, I don't want to get sued by the LA Times just when we've started to become friends so I can't show it to you (I originally did have it here but eventually they're going to find it and want me to take it down so I'm just going to take it down now.)


Full article can be found here




Even if I don't sell one thing from this...I don't care. This is a HUGE honor. Huge. Gigantic. I'm freaking out. I have to go freak out now.