Get to Know TeamLove Members: Bill and Debi Reed

Love of Vintage Team is very lucky to have several husband and wife teams who sell vintage jewelry on Etsy.  This edition of "Get to Know" features one such team.  Debi Reed, of My Vintage Jewels and her husband of 50 years, Bill, who captains the helm of Bill's Vintage Vault, as well as Bill's Art Shop, have a great story to tell.  The ultimate 60s couple through the years!

In Debi's words:

Before Etsy, Bill and I lived in Hermosa Beach in Southern California when we first met and married. Bill went to school at Chouinard Art Institute while I was at home with our two boys.  I did a lot of crafts back then, from beading to hooking rugs.  For a couple of years we made jewelry -- with stones, beads and feathers, and sold it to different shops from Redondo Beach to Malibu.  After all it was the 1960s!  Bill went on to spend many years working as an Animator and Director of the Animated Cartoon Studios in Los Angeles.  During most of that period I was collecting vintage and antique furniture and knick knacks for our home.

In 1975 we moved to the Sierra Foothills, about 25 miles outside of Nevada City -- at the end of a dirt road and a mile from any paved roads.   We lived totally off the grid for many years, without a phone or electricity -- but we did have water from our own well.

Home in the Woods

We built our own house (no contractors, just us) and furnished it with the antiques we had collected.  In fact we used most everything we had collected, from the Hoosier cabinet, kerosene lamps, a 1930s cast iron and porcelain "Clark" cooking stove, a wood stove, a hand crank meat grinder, and even a wonderful "De Laval" cream separator.  That was for separating the cream and milk from the goats we raised.

Big Garden

We planted a huge garden and sold organic vegetables, flowers and herbs at the local Farmer's Market. Living like this was a real adventure for all of us and hard to leave -- but the memories of life in the woods will always be with us.

Bill continued working for the studios and flying to Los Angeles for several weeks during the year. Those studios gave us a great opportunity for travel and we spent six months living in Madrid, Spain and also in Seoul, South Korea.  In fact we adopted our daughter when we were in South Korea and our family grew to Bill and me and three children.


We decided to move to Roseville in 1996 and "get civilized" while our daughter was in high school, and we've lived there ever since.  Since we had collected to much over the years it was time to start letting go of some of it.  I originally turned to Ebay  to start selling a few items.  One of our sons told us about Etsy and once we tried it we never looked back -- we were hooked on Etsy!

From MyVintageJewels

I went back to my first love, jewelry -- but instead of making it I started buying, collecting and selling vintage jewels -- hence the name of my shop -- "My Vintage Jewels".   I opened in late 2008 and Bill opened his shop "Bill's Vintage Vault" for the overflow. And there has been quite a bit of overflow!  We went from having about 50 items in our inventory to about 800 items listed in our shops. Our house is literally filled with vintage jewelry!

We joined TeamLove, where we learned about using social media to promote our shops.  Etsy has gone through a lot of changes over the last seven years and we have needed to change along with it.  We now know how to tweet, pin, google +, along with Facebook and so many other social media!  Our house is filled with vintage jewelry yet to be photographed, described and listed.  It is also filled with art!!

From MyVintageJewels

Art has always been a large part of Bill's life and after retiring from the animation business he took up painting.  In addition to our vintage jewelry shops on Etsy, Bill has an Etsy shop for his art work, "Bill's Art Shop".

From BillsArtShop

When we're not working our Etsy shops we enjoy gardening -- growing our own vegetables, and canning and freezing them too.  And of course we love going on the search -- garage and yard sales and estate sales too.  But more than anything else we enjoy spending time with our children and  our six grandchildren -- which we do as often as possible!

Debi and Bill Reed