Twenty four year old Louise Hearson pushes paper for the man from 9-5, Monday–Friday in the Perth CBD. She then gets to toddle on home to the most amazingly creative, peculiar, eccentric odd bod of a house. Its there she can hide away in her own little happy hub and can get down and dirty doing the bling thing.
Not that you really need to know this but Hearson is the oldest of two sisters, a Capricorn, a mad dog fan of 90’s Hip Hop and allergic to mangoes. It took her two and a half hours of hard-core thinking and IPod dissecting for her to get back to me with her all time favorite 90’s jam.
She may not be able to remember exactly why she got into jewelry design, but in November of last year, Hearson decided she wanted to learn the tricks of the trade and hasn’t looked back.
“It was either because I wanted something and couldn’t find it, or I found something and I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it” she admits
It was then she got together some design ideas, bought the goods to get cracking then nutted out a trade name,
“Ugh! That was the worst task, I wanted one word that didn’t make me cringe”
As it turns out this was a little harder than she first thought, there was no word she had gone over that didn’t make her wince. So, she made up her own.
“Billiums is derived from my love of Bill Murray and a scuba diving science teacher from Brooklyn… I also happened to be watching Life Aquatic at the time, and Google said it wasn’t already taken”
With the name task complete, Hearson was clear to knuckle down. She’s often found burning the midnight oil, smashing out her newest designs.
“I measure, saw, bend, solder, hammer, file and sand every piece by hand. Then it goes in my wonderful tumbler to be polished to a state of bling”.
All of this is done from the comforts of her home studio, which as I have already mentioned is incredible. To be honest, it would be a great feat not being creative in the little abode slash oasis that is THE Hubble Street house of East Fremantle.
Eccentric artist, Andrew Hayim de Vries owned the property from 1985- 2005, turning his abode into a live in masterpiece. Truly, the house includes a room made from a train carriage, a wheelhouse kitchen an outdoor bathroom with a Perspex roof and general anomalous bits and pieces bloody everywhere.
“My home studio is a second story retreat attached to my outside bathroom, it has astro turf on the floor, enough bench space to home all my stuff as well as a little couch for tools down time”
What I’m trying to say is there is simply no way Hearson couldn’t be churning out delightful goodies from her suburban eclectic jungle house.
Billiums is currently constructing a neat-o little website that will blow your socks off. Until then, beautiful bits of Billiums bling is available for purchase from the Facebook page. Riiiiiiigggghhhht here.
* Photo’s of studio and Louise Hearson courtesy of the very talented and kind, Hollie Lunan *
Mugs 
