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Creating makes our hearts sing - it is magical.
This is my fantasy...which also serves as an introduction. I imagine reading about this in your favorite vintage loving magazine.....
Reporter: Today we are visiting with
Arlene McComas of Heartrock Designs. You can find her at HeartRocksHome.com.
Upon entering her studio – you can’t help but notice the wide array of materials in boxes and bins and baskets around her large work table. It is like a peddler opening his pack. Buttons – old and new, shells, feathers, beads, vintage flowers and lace, old tags and cotton ribbon.
Seeing the room is like seeing one of Arlene’s creations…a combination of old and new, primitive and fanciful.
Reporter: Tell us how did this all begin?
Arlene: It probably began when I was a little girl going up on a dairy farm in southern Idaho. My mother was very industrious and productive…she had to be.
Reporter: No, I mean the creative process that became Heartrocks.
Arlene: It has probably always been ‘there’….but it wasn’t until I was ’50-odd’ that ‘it’ was born.
Reporter: Tell me about that birthing process.
Arlene: I have always been intrigued with old things, and art supplies. I love garage sales, and ‘found’ objects…twigs, rusty tin and the like. I love the feel of vintage fabrics and working with them. They come with a story and personality. One year I decided "this" couldn’t wait any longer…and the creative process  began as I put this with that and  as I created one piece and then another. Each created piece would slowly be born in my head waiting for a place to live. It was slow at first but it wasn’t long until it was in full bloom. I guess after all those years in hibernation it just ‘exploded’  when I started to ‘wake it up’. I looked around at all the things I had loved and collected over the years and started putting them together…the beginning of Heartrocks.
My current focus is on using vintage flour sacks. And what fun it has been. I have challenged myself to find a use for every tiny bit of the fabric in them. I love to challenge myself and push myself to be creative. I also love being 'frugal'. I was raised on a Homestead in Southern Idaho and we lived by the words..
Use it up - Wear it out- Make it do or Do without.
Reporter: Why the name Heartrocks,  we notice there is a heart in every piece you do.
Arlene: Heartrocks actually began when my husband, a Natural Resource Specialists, came home from work one day with a rock….perfectly heart-shaped. His tender expression and the rock discovery took my breath away….and Heartrocks was born. I hope everyone that has a Heartrock creation will have their breath taken away one way or another. They will feel the magic or the love that goes into its creation.
Reporter: Your studio is called; ‘The Magic Room’ is there is story there?
Arlene: During our “family raising” years….I had an unfinished room in our basement that served as the place for magic to happen. I would feel overwhelmed with the demands of four children and a husband that worked out of town…and could enter this corner of the basement and create something..(I was even blessed to sale my things, folk art type painting, in the Ridpath gallery for a few years - that was fun but became to demanding to balance that and my family) However that creating and doing something that would stay done…unlike the piles of household chores that were never done and waiting upstairs... it was like MAGIC…I would feel so better when I left than when I entered… “The Magic Room.” 
Reporter –  Upon leaving ‘The Magic Room’ I understood the name…I too felt better as I left than when I entered.
My heart was singing.
Thank-you Arlene