IT’S HIP TO BE SQUARE

Hunched over a Sears Craftsman power tool, worn shop-rag dangling from a back pocket of her loose denims, Tammy Talbot evokes Rosie the Riveter. With goggles shielding her eyes and crimson lips pursed in concentration, the “Queen of Dice,” as she’s known among friends, drills holes through Lucite, metal flake and “fakelite” cubes that she then assembles, also by hand. The vintage-look accessories have swept rockabilly, swing and lounge scenes, distinguishing this L.A. clique from the trendy one that torched this fall’s “Buddha” bead bracelet craze.

A hair and makeup artist by day (she recently wrapped “The Chaos Factor” with Antonio Sabato Jr.), Talbot, 34, is a sucker for classic Americana. She was moved to do her own dice sculpture (bracelets, hair baubles, earrings) after admiring vintage Bakelite bracelets from the ‘40s. Initially, Talbot and her fiance, vintage car and motorcycle restorer “Chopper Dave” Freston, ferried the dice, which are purchased on runs to a Vegas gambling supply warehouse, to a machine shop to be punctured. Now, she nixes the idea of farming out the scut work. “I’m really picky,” she says.

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Lucky 11, (213) 368-6199. Available at 8 Ball (Burbank), Na Na Trading and Soaplant (Los Angeles).