{ Before it was BeesWax .. The Untold Story behind Pollen Arts }

Before I was able to start writing this, I had to slide my pad of paper out of the leather holder and replace it with a brand new one. This isn’t a philosophical gesture of some kind, but rather necessary because juwels was using the pages of my current writing pad to press the dark green leaves of some sort of wild parsley which she found on our last quick trip down into Oak Creek Canyon with the goats.

   And I liked the irony in the fact that those pressed leaves, and all kinds of other salvaged natural materials, have everything to do with the story I'm about to write.

   Back when juwels and I were parking / living on the city streets in the Winnebago, we called a small coastal town, Venice Beach, our home. And unless we were headed to the state campground to dump our tanks, every 2 or 3 weeks when the Winnie got to use the bathroom, we rarely cut our 5-block umbilical cord from the beach and the boardwalk. 

   (A view through the porthole window that we installed beside the Winnie's "crow's nest" bed - we sleep up there in her forehead : ) It made for great wave watching by day, and by night, I scouted cops and riffraff in the streets through this glass eye : ) 

We worked on the Free Speech side of the boardwalk with the waves and the palm trees at our back, selling copies of my first novel, stone and silver spun earrings from the hands of juwels, and other strange up-cycled items and alley finds.

(her sign pertains to the city trying to regulate the beach-side spaces) 
 

(This is the novel I wrote based on a nightmare I had .. Juwels shot and designed the cover. It's a very different kind of story .. )  

(juwels and her jewels .. her wired wrapped peace signs were a big hit, hand strung with red coral, turquoise, African Christmas beads, and all sorts of other goodies : )

(You can see me in the background, over it, and hanging in my hammock .. job perk for sure : ) 

 

(When the sky says this .. you know the work day's almost over : ) 

 

   At night, we covered the windshield and side windows with vintage fabric, and we slept in the Winnie's pull-down bed in hand picked parking spots all over the neighborhood. We moved around a lot, so nobody would have to see us for too long, and never parked in front of somebody's house or apartments. 

   We tucked away along the broadside of businesses on Lincoln Ave, parked curbside beside a solid fence, or tall black out hedges to stay discreet. All this to keep our front door and comings and goings hidden, and to not rub in too harshly the fact that we were living free in the slowly gentrified hippy-turned-hipster neighborhood where many were just living to pay rent. Some people hated us for this. So at night, we were quiet, blinds drawn and the music down to an indistinguishable hum to the late-night passerby with the loaded mind and leashed pug or poodle.

   But inside the seemingly vacant Winnie, we might have been playing Simon and Garfunkel and sipping tea in our pj’s. We did everything that a married couple might do in their home, separated from the world and the nightly traffic by a two-inch-thick foam-and-siding wall from the year 1975. We had friends from thousands of miles away come and crash on our couch as we illegally crashed on your curb. Sometimes we’d show up early in front of a friend’s place, knock on their door and invite them over for breakfast. How’s that for curbside service : ? 

   I felt a bit like James in his giant peach. And by day, normally at 6 a.m. right when the beach lot opened … so juwels could get her “favorite spot”, we’d be pulled by a flock of seagulls to the state-run beachfront parking lot, and that’s where we’d really live.

  (The Winnie .. parked in juwels "favorite" spot .. at the far North end of the Rose lot, no space/ "neighbor" on our door side, and a night time view across the surf and sand to the Santa Monica pier with it's lit up Ferris wheel and coaster blinking in the dark sky. 

   When we had guests over for dinner, this spot was a must, and juwels would prod me out of bed just before 6am, so we could be idling at the toll booth when the attendant showed and jump right on it .. ha ha ha)  

_____________________________________   

   Here, (in a place we paid to bee and to exist, for isn't that what it's all about?) we could let our door swing open in the breeze with a gold-lace silk sari draping and hiding our inner world like a veil. At night, we hid, and hibernated like many other peaceful prey animals. But during the day, I could write in the captain's chair with my feet up on the dashboard and my pad propped on the steering wheel, watching early morning surfers catch a wave, and juwels could run her sewing machine on the drop-leaf table with the sun and the sea breeze coming in through the open window. 

   It was no fun to hide out from the cops and the fussy neighbors late at night and in the wee hours of the morning, but it made for a nightly mystery, and it also made the safe harbor and the taste of freedom in the buzzing beach parking lot such a sweet thing.

   It wasn't just us who settled these streets in the name of affordable living and proximity to the boardwalk market. There was a whole community of freaks, war vets, junkies and artists living in the margins of those tropical neighborhoods in colorful old school buses, vans, RVs and SUVs. And for those who could afford the toll booth (and sometimes we couldn't) a whole team of rusty wagons would find sanctuary in the Rose Ave parking lot. And besides other gypsies, nobody from decent society ever bothered you in the confines of the lot.

   (I could write a piece about almost every picture in here .. such a colorful place with wild and free characters. Some people just curled their lip, but I was smiling all the time. ) 

 

(This guy (above) was a mobile hoarder, and used to pile things on top of his RV and car(s) ... nobody knew where his money came from, to buy the cars and pay the tickets he was always getting, but he was super interesting, and I used to see him pulling in late night down the same street that we were parked on and sleep a few spaces down .. roomies : )

(Steve - above - just showed up on the scene with 3 buses and people flocked to his good nature and wide smile. He reminded me of the painter guy from the movie, "As Good as it Gets" .. his end in Venice was an interesting one .. and involved the nightly news..)

(This old bus was from the 60's and only made an appearance for a short time in Venice. There was an easy going older couple who lived in it, and the wife was always trying to buy or barter the boots off juwels feet ... ha ha ha .. never made it happen though : )

(The guy in that motorhome down there on the left was a trip ... oh, man .. next blog. )

   The Rose lot provided an open state of consciousness, and projects were inspired in that space. Some artistic, like my writing or the thumping of juwels sewing machine, and others were merely on the “honey-do” list, like, climbing up on the roof to silicone a leaky seam on the skylight, scrubbing graffiti off the front door, taking out the recycling and respectfully distributing it in neighborhood bins (compost was snuck into the Whole Foods deli seating area) I stole water from the public beach showers to fill our tanks. And in the noise of the day, we’d fire up the generator and tools from time to time and mend our rolling display. Our solar panel wasn't strong enough to run our juicer, so when the generator was running, juwels often seized the opportunity to run a watermelon or basket of farmer's market veggies thru the champion.

   
    Of course, sealed in at night, projects could still be conducted, but that was quiet time, and the Winnie's indoor lights could be a little soft, depending on the charging of the solar panel, and something about the sun and the breeze coming in through our windows just inspired us.

  And one such daytime project, and actually the concept that brought us the name “Pollen Arts” long before we began our Beeswax Bottle Shaped Alchemy, involves many urban harvested materials. Naturally fallen eucalyptus leaves with red trim, bamboo leaves from the alleyway, tiny white daisies from the lawns of the boardwalk parks and bike paths, and we even hit up the local landscape guys, who seemed perplexed and wondering why we wanted to dig through their trash cans to fish out clippings of flowering bushes .. but we were making something great !!

   Even though they say Southern California has no seasons, just sunny all the time, to the Venice Beach Street vendor, there are people seasons. Times when the sun is hot, and the carpooling highschoolers and sweaty working class families washed up on our West Coast Coney Island in droves. There was June gloom, yes. Wind storms that spit sand hard enough to peal the skin from your legs. 

   And it did rain, ironically on the weekends, and in those times, things would get a wee bit slim for the people-fishing performers and street artists. Local vendors would get grizzly and skinny, bearded and mean. Weekend spots were fought over even more with the stakes so high, and we all prayed for a fast-forward to spring. 

___________________________________

   Pollen Arts came around during one of these slow seasons, when I was tapping the old right brain for new gigs or ideas, and even clicking over to the Craigslist “labor” listings from time to time, 

“Yes! We can white wash that fence for you!! Give us a ring at 555…”   

   (Insert crickets chirping here..) 

   Stomach .. gurgles .. 

  We had a couple t-shirt concepts, still do, “And, tote bags could work too!” But who had the money for organic blanks and screen setups, not to mention regular healthy food ?

   For spans of time we’d literally just tool around the beach neighborhoods in the Winnie, squirting just enough gas into the tank to putter from the empty street beside Gold's Gym, at night, and then two blocks west to the beach parking lot. And then there were times when we couldn't spare the  ten bucks for beach parking, and we’d just leave the bedroom parked on the streets, pull the rusty old wagon and display off the roof and wheel it across the broken and uneven sidewalks to our vending spot on the beach and boardwalk.
 

   "Don't you think that would work?," I ask juwels, excited about some idea or another.

   “What?”

   “My idea. Do you think that could work out?” 

   "Oh... Peter .. I don't know ..  maybe? I can't think about ideas right now. We need to... Well... I think I need to get a job."

   (Insert crickets chirping here, again.) 

   “What???” 

   We'd always worked together. Building things, selling, writing and editing, and now she was going to run off and get a job???

   "I just can't think creatively when we have no money for food .. for parking or if something breaks on the Winnie. We need to make a little nest egg and then I can relax enough to think about a new project. I don't wanna be doing it to save our lives...”

   “Where are you going to work?” I asked

   “I don't know yet...” 

   
   We knew a friend through a friend who worked at a famous, working on being infamous, Raw food restaurant just a ways off the boardwalk in Santa Monica. And after an awkward first interview, (the owner’s a bit of a kook and huffed at the fact that juwels was named “juwels.”)

“Hold on !!”  he snapped while the manager was making an intro, “What's your name??”

“Juwels...”

Huff ..

“And what's My name?” He asked, (luckily she knew.)

“Juliano...”

“Exactly!!!” He said, “It's too similar!”

(Insert crickets chirping here for the third time.)

“It’s too confusing,” he explained, “sometimes people call me Jules.”

“Well... “Juwels said, “you can call me Julia.”

   A few days later, she was tying the straps on her self-made black apron and winning over the diners, strict kitchen staff .. and even the “other” Jules. She had an immediate encyclopedic knowledge of the foods, flavors, and ingredients, which made people hungry, and he liked the large closeout totals she’d leave in the black book at the end of the night.

I'm not going to lie, this steady work was a luxury for both of us, and juwels really liked the work - healthy food, happy people, daily employee meals, random celebrity diners and loads of drama and stories to bring home about Juliano’s planet .. complete with his stalkers, bill collectors, restraining orders on old girlfriends, tiffs, fits and blowouts.  

And I’d continue to drag my book booth out there on to the boardwalk on the weekends, with a chalkboard sign reading “Does Anyone Read Anymore?” And the overwhelming response seemed to be a big fat No.

I spent a little time working and writing for a friend's production company within skateboarding distance from the beach, and ate at the raw restaurant when I’d get too lonely.

I was supposed to be writing this second book .. the one I'm still talking about writing now, but two things happened: the script writing job peppered with the dreaded cold-call duty, drained me... And then after starving and hiding out on the streets for a while, and now that we could eat well and regularly park in the sunny beach lot again, I found that my brain and body needed some deep recharging time. And so it went, for a while.
_____________________________________

   During this time, I got so bitter that all my creative energy was going into writing thirty-second scripts for TV commercials or video game trailers, (I'd been kind of sold into this gig by juwels and my talented and well-meaning film friend who spoke of big commissions, and had not entirely gone willingly.) 

   And when I couldn't physically sit still and write, I'd head off down the boardwalk on my skateboard and log street details to memory for later writing projects. The bums, the vendors, snippets of cell phone calls from tourists, and the canned jargon peddled out by signboard holders and beachfront medicinal marijuana barkers.

But one of my biggest pleasures and escapes was sitting on a rickety chair at the booth of my favorite vendor. He's maybe 50 years old, a relic on the boardwalk and one of those rare idiosyncratic savants, a genius and all around strange guy. I could sit and listen to him for hours, and most times I did. I recorded him, snuck pictures, watched him deal with other street people and city officials. He’s fascinating. With an Ivy League degree, law, and intense knowledge on a thousand other topics, it turns out that he'd rather cut paper into small circles and manually press pinback buttons in the sun. He called his booth, “Button Land.” 

(The guy to Kissenger's right, the old man wearing the sign "old man sleeping, not dead" ... is fascinating as well. But we'll have to save him for another time too.)

 

   Maybe it's this ASMR thing I've been hearing about lately, the same dynamic that used to put me into a trance when I was a child and I’d watch and listen to Bob Ross softly talking and painting .. scraping the canvas with his sharp knife, mixing paint colors, and whacking the paint thinner off his brush. But I love watching this guy work those tiny scissors, press papers circles and the click-clack function of the button machine. And all the while talking about the Latin roots of this or the actual inventor of that or how the political setup of the street vendors was a lot like the fall of ancient Rome.

   
   But he wasn't stuffy and pompous about is knowledge, that would have bored me and turned me off, but instead he applied it to a pigeon on the eve or a song playing from the tattoo shop across the way. And watching him interact with all kinds of people, telling jokes that sailed over heads, speaking many different languages while blushing and sometimes stumbling over his words in English, was the icing on the cake. His last name is Kissenger, and although he doesn’t seem to love it, I call him Kissenger.

   I pressed buttons for him when he was feeling sick or lazy and I was feeling fidgety. It’s pretty fun. Drop in the back part of the button spin, click, drop in the front, and the image, and the plastic cover, spin press, click, press, and out comes a button, finished.

   I must have watched him press a thousands, shrugging and talking in that shy voice of his. I caught kids pocketing things from his table and brought fourth dollars with a simple glare. And very soon this mind's eye knowledge into the birth cycle of a pinback button would guide a childhood hobby of juwels into a booming little business, a creative outlet and meditation for lonely me... And eventually, liberate juwels from her day job... And just when things were getting weird(er) at work.

   One evening we had the Winnie safely double parked in the Whole Foods parking lot, and juwels was making dinner on all four burners, and as I kept an eye and stirred things, she was also running back and forth to the coin-op laundry mat in the same parking lot. We always did this on laundry days.

   And after dinner, we were in fresh new jammies but still not out of the Whole Foods parking lot and in our sleep spot for the night, and the conversation between the two of us had tapered off, and I found myself on the couch, reaching for a book from the shelf. I awkwardly reached over my shoulder and behind my back, hoping to pick a book spine at random, they’re all good titles, but the books were jam packed in there so tight that I couldn't get my pinchers on one to pull it out.

   So I cranked around, sliding Steppenwolf out with some difficulty and complained, “Why are these books so jam packed in here???”  

   Juwels normally kept them pretty tight, so they wouldn't come flying out every time I hit the brakes, but this setup was a bit over the top.

   I leafed the pages of the book open to read a passage, and juwels called out, “Oh .. Be careful with that!!!”

   And at that same instant, a few dry and pressed white daisies came fluttering out from the pages like snowflakes onto my lap.

   Juwels came sliding across the bamboo floor in her cozy socks and gathered them up, saying, “I'm pressing flowers on that shelf. That's why the books are so tight.. I had to find the perfect mix of titles to fit so well.”

   “Pressing flowers?”

   “Yeah, I've done it since I was a little girl. I've got a couple four leaf clovers in there too.”

   I remembered a laminated bookmark she’d made for me when we first started dating, with a little hand typed note inside and a four leaf clover with a very long stem.

   I held out my hand, and she gently placed one of the daisies in my palm. I picked the thing up with my other hand and studied its still-life perfection. The scraggly white petals, bright yellow pollen and pressed seeds, and I liked it.

   But then another part of me came out and said, “These are nice … but what can you really do with them??”

   “I don't know.. I just like them. I like picking them and pressing them and..

   My mind drifted, and I turned the thing sideways in my pinched fingers. It was paper-thin. And then my mind drifted again, to my friend on the boardwalk, loading those paper discs into the button machine.

   “Hey..” I said, “I wonder if you could put pressed flowers into a button machine?”

   Juwels squinted, turning her vision inward, as she'd seen the button booth on many occasions and knew the press well.

  “This thing’s paper thin,” I said, and she agreed.

   The next morning, just after parking the Winnie in juwels favorite beach-lot space … and before we’d even had breakfast, we dropped a few leaves and flowers into an envelope, pulled the beach cruisers off the cargo rack and headed down to Button Land. Kissenger was there early, too, roosting on his chosen vending spot since before sunrise so no other street artists could snag it first, and we told him our idea.

   “Well.. We can try,” he said, but sounded skeptical.

   Also, he was low on money and had been fretting over the wobbly condition of his machine for a while, so he might have been worried that this little experiment might throw the alignment off even more..

   We fished a few flowers out, and juwels even had a rich maroon-colored plumb leaf, which she cut into a perfect circle for the background. With the button machine waiting on a splintered snack tray, we fitted the metal parts in place and then the circular plum leaf and the small flowers. The plastic sheet covered all, raising the delicate flower a bit with the pull of its static electricity, and we were ready.

   We held our breath as the tiny organic image was spun around and pressed up into the machine, and then the pin-back was locked into place and pressed too. The button was now finished, crimped and sealed, but hidden behind the machine’s body in lever action.

   “Well.. Let's seeee..” he said, and spun the action back around towards us.

   It was perfect and beautiful and functional and complete.

   “It worked!” I said, as he handed the button over to juwels.

   She squealed and looked over all the detail, which was now safely sealed inside this wearable art. “People are going to love this!” she said,  “I love this!!”

   “It's pretty great,” I said, feeling very proud of myself.. Even though the idea had taken me a minute-and-a-half to come up with (channeled?) and another two minutes to prototype. 

   *** Oh, we could make them magnets, too : ) 

 

__________________________________________________________

   
   With juwels big Raw bucks, we got online down at the Venice library and ordered a button machine right away, and over the next week, we scouted the parks, alleys and side yards of Venice, picking wild passion flowers, orange and pink hibiscus, bougainvillea, tan bamboo leaves, finely pealed tree bark, and daisies galore. We pressed them in dictionaries we found second hand and later graduated to a half dozen handmade wood-and-bolt flower presses with real blotters, cardboard buffer sheets, wax paper, the works.

   We found large yellow daisies and ferns down by the canals, and later integrated seagull, pigeon, parrot and raven feathers into the mix. We knocked on doors and asked if we could liberate a few flowers for an art project, and most people obliged.  

   Roses were too nurtured and treasured a thing to wild harvest through a white picket fence. So we'd pick these up early morning in the commercial flower district in downtown LA. And of course juwels loved having fresh cut flowers in our sacred space, and she even came home with fragrant white tuberose and other genus which blatantly couldn't be used for our craft. 

"The guy gave me a deal .. I couldn't pass them up! Smell'em!!"

(Juwels place settings on the Winnie's drop-leaf table : )

   (We'd lie in the lawn on the edge of the boardwalk in between Venice and Santa Monica and pick these adorable Bellis Daisies for hours. Juwels loved to count as she picked .. she found it to bee a lovely mindfulness meditation. I think the most she ever picked and pressed in a single day was 777.

   And the alleys of Venice were covered with vines and vines of wild Passion Flowers.)

   (Juwels called these our 'secret garden' daisies. We only knew of one particular alley where these beauties grew in a little guerrilla garden. I was always too scared we'd get caught, so I'd send her and wait on the corner, like, "come on .. come on .. that's plenty. let's split !!! ha ha ha  ; )

(We found these leaves at the Ojai hotsprings. We absolutely love how the caterpillars had nibbled out a delicate mosaic pattern.) 

(Bougainvillea - ubiquitous in SoCal .. and one of our favorite flowers to layer in the background .. so much detail in these beautiful venous petals ; )

(Chamomile cuteness)

(Painted rose petals: It was always a treat when we got lucky enough to find these gorgeous roses in the flower district.)

(Eucalyptus leaves: usually picked out of the gutter in the Venice Beach neighborhoods. They smelled so amazing when you'd cut through the leaf, and the oils would fill the air : ) 

Thanks again to the caterpillars, these aromatic eucalyptus leaves were often nibbled to perfection on the edges and made for great hillsides and grounds ; )

_______________________________________

  

   While swimming, I loaded the cargo pockets of my bathing suit with purple dulse seaweed and dried it on the Winnie’s dashboard. We found a secret connection for tiny Chinese mushrooms to press, and for a while, we were finding thousands of dead bees and ladybugs washed up on our early morning beach walks, and although this saddened and confused us, the wings and dotted shells of those fallen ladies became part of the show.

   We worked with tweezers and push-pin needles and even pinprick drips of honey to hold things in place from time to time. And you had to be careful not to breathe too heavily over one of these tiny panoramas or else your whole layered display would go blowing across the table.

(Tea and buttons - yum : )

   This was the perfect Winnie-sized project, everything organized and miniature, no electricity needed, and endless free supplies just a bike ride in the sun away. And once we'd made a hundred or so, we built a little display out of the old transport wagon and a large alley-found picture frame, and it was time to roll our new concept from the Winnie’s back bumper, through the beach parking lot and directly out on to the boardwalk in front of tens of thousands of people.

(Juwels could always freehand the best signs : )

   The response was immediate, and overwhelming. People were freaking out. And for some people, buying one wasn't easy because first you had to pick one, and as I said, we'd made a hundred unique pieces. And that was a lot to take in for an easy, breezy beachgoer.

   We actually had a girl work herself into a panic one time when her family was tired of waiting for her to choose, and before she started crying, I stepped in and said, “Okay.. Let's narrow it down. Bright colors or earth tones?”

   “Bright, “she said

   “Great.. Feathers, no feathers? … And what about mushrooms?” And I presented to her the distilled options, and she was able to pick a winner without further heartache or complication.

   Juwels started getting a few shifts covered here and there at work so she could ride the neighborhood streets with me and pick flowers, and back in the Winnie, we’d cutout stamens, shake off pollen, separate petals, and press the moisture and expiration date out of our catch of the day.

   I remember hot days on the boardwalk when juwels would send me skating back to the Winnie to make more as she ran the booth, and when I’d come back with a handful, people would sniff out the best before they’d even been punched into the canvas … and back I’d go. We got so busy for a while that we used to hire a goofy old homeless guy to press flowers in his bible or bring us film canisters of scouted bee bodies and lady bugs that he found washed up on the beach. It was a thing that I never quite got used to, and chuckled every time we’d get a 7am knock at the Winnie’s door, and I’d open up to find his sad droopy face and a handful of found bugs. Five dollars would send him off smiling, and we’d get back to work.   

   In the beginning, we just had fun, and most everything made its way to market, and we could sell them cheap for the volume was so high. But growing in the intricate process and always wanting to challenge ourselves and do our best, soon we were coming out with a finished product that was more art than craft. And we’d have to compensate with higher prices.

   In this phase, we'd run into some people who’d quibble, “But it's just a button !!”

   I tried to explain that a button was just a piece of paper and 60 seconds of time, and that this was something else, and that it was only merely being born through the mechanics of a button machine. Most people got it, but it was interesting to see that the overwhelming market wanted less quality, higher volume and lower prices. But we just made them the way we wanted, and had lots of fun together. 

   We went through a stint when we sold to stores, but wholesale and long distance deadlines wasn't for us. We liked to meet the people and let them know where their art was being born. We took it on the road and setup in ballrooms in downtown Los Angeles during Art Walk and attended a barefoot festival in the hills of Topanga.

   (When we sold some to stores, we used to pack these little pouches with wildflower seeds and stitch on the labels .. we'd do this for people too at the markets .. made for a nice gift : ) 

 

 

   We met many amazing new people during this time, friends to this day, and the buttons were our craft and meditation for a long while. And as things continued to grow, juwels went from getting shifts covered to going "on call" (still with the shop discount : ), and I had my baby and partner in crime back! 

   We didn't have a name for our thing at first, but after foolishly trying to speed up the drying process by putting a press filled with 150 or so daisies with very thick pollens in the Winnie’s little oven, and me tumbling out of the front door and into the neighborhood during a sneezing attack.. I said, “I don't know if I can do this in the Winnie anymore.. This pollen is just.." 

   And then, never finishing the statement, and surely not meaning it in the first place, I said, “Hey .. what do you think about the name Pollen Arts?”

   
Juwels laughed at me, “I loVe it !!”

   We bought the .com that evening, and it's funny how a year later the name Pollen Arts would suit our beeswax candle project very well : ) 

 

   In fact, our etsy page was originally set up for the buttons, just never uploaded any before coming onto the candles. 

   And the story we told about finding the antique bottle in the tide pool, which spawned our candle idea came from the heart of our time with the flower art. And one of the main reasons we were scouting that beach in the first place was to find seaweed for more buttons. 

   The crossover from Pollen Arts fine art buttons and Pollen Arts candles happened within maybe a week. And this old-new idea just kind of got swept out to sea with the coming of the etsy interview, trade shows, the candle studio, and all that jazz. We’ve wanted to share this for a while, but we didn’t think we had the time for it … and we were sure it would be half-assed and ripped off by many .. but we might as well stop hiding this sleeping beauty, and let the world kiss her flowery red lips : )

   So … here goes nothing !!

Behold .. the Original Pollen Arts!!!

   We're happy to say that we’ve dug out the ol' button presses and boxes and bins of dried flowers, feathers, leaves and mushrooms .. and we’re bringing them back! And in these between seasons of candle making, as a hobby and a meditation, we’ll be making batches of unique organic wearable art and adding it to our etsy page on a get-them-while-you-can basis : )

   We're very excited to offer these to our tight group of friends and followers, and finally reintroduce another concept brought to us by that most mysterious muse that is … Mother Nature.

   Okay there's much more to tell about this flowering chapter in our lives, but you may have to wait till our paperback hits the streets.

   Check out our Facebook page on Friday the 23rd, where we'll bee hosting an eleven-winner GiveAway that we’re posting before we even start offering these for sale!

Thanks for reading, loVe & honey,

p&j .. & .. c&e .. and the flowers and the beeeeeeeees !!!