Twelve Houses Blog

Hi, I’m Lu and I’m a crafter.  I love jewelry - Pieces that are beautiful, inexpensive,  have signature impact but are easy and comfortable to wear.  Fine jewelry of precious metals and gems can be breath-takingly beautiful- but wearing something very expensive makes me uneasy. Costume or Fashion Jewelry is what I love.  As a crafter, I’ve explored lots of media for making fashion jewelry.  I’ve studied metal fabrication, glass, wood, stone, cement, fabric and paper as components for handmade jewelry.  For me, resin is the best of all these for making beautiful inexpensive jewerly.  Why? Weight:  As a lover...

Celebrating Kindness We have family excitement next week:  the wedding of our son to a wonderful woman.  The wedding is small and appropriately socially-distanced of course.  Even so, the amount of work is astounding. Our days are buzzing with wedding prep.  It is happy, but there’s stress too.  My husband and I found ourselves sniping at each other.  How could we live through the next week with grace?  Should we send each other to time out?  Have beer for breakfast? Be awake only when the moon is out? We decided on a code word:  Kindness.  If one says “kindness”- it...

The Tale of Twelve Houses It’s true:  There is a lot of bad in the world.  Bad stuff happens.  Some we can prevent, other stuff we can’t.  There is so much we can’t control.  But there is one thing we have a lot of control over- what we think, and how we react to what happens around us. (Thanks, Victor Frankel!)   In this world of chaos and stress, Zoey and Lu deliberately choose to cultivate joy.  This means spreading love, kindness and delight.  Art is the best way we know to find soul-deep satisfaction.   Twelve Houses is Art for...

Did you read that right?  It’s googie with an “I”, not google with an “L”.  I first encountered this word a few days ago, and am so happy to have found it! Art Deco design is wonderful, right?  Both the Chrysler Building in NYC and Senor Frog's restaurant in Miami's South Beach are classic examples.   Streamline Moderne is a design style that grew out of Art Deco in the 1930’s.  It was all about long horizontal movement and curving lines.  It’s sleek, aerodynamic lines were Art Deco minus the details, stripped down to fundamentals.     Googie style grew up...