I WAS HELPING SANTA STACEY LAMOTHE!
I was an elf!!

Hubby bought this for me when I became a step-mom. A rose with wings on one side and "courage" on the back.
I actually helped build Holiday Jewelry! Well, it isn’t really Holiday jewelry as much as it is jewelry that is given during the holidays. In fact, a few Xmases ago, Hubby gave this to me. At the time, I didn’t know Stacey Lamothe, the artist, but I loved this cross!
Anyway…
Fast forward a few years and I have met Stacey! She is one of my neighbors in Grass Valley. Small World.
Well, it seems that Stacey had a show this weekend and as the clock was ticking down, she felt that some help would be greatly appreciated. So, she asked me to put on my elf hat and come to the factory.
And I did!
LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY!
Actually, it was mostly dogs, cats and horses. I was surrounded by animal heads in various forms of completion.
Sterling on copper, mostly… Some without noses, some without wire, some without whiskers and some without forelocks.
My job was to add earring wires, assemble and prepare the cards, hang the earrings on the card and put them in the travel box. I also had the extreme job of putting the necklace pendants on jump rings (there’s a real knack to that), add the chains, price them and hang the finished necklaces in the display. Whew!
To be honest, I wanted to do everything so perfectly for her that I actually sweated a little over the jump-ring assembly part… But after I got into the rhythm, I really did feel like Santa Stacey’s little elflette.
Meanwhile, Santa Stacey was cutting out every piece of sterling by hand, putting on every copper nose, hammering every whisker, engraving every curl and stamping all sayings. She had rocks tumbling and copper oxidizing in one room while we were assembling and finishing in the next.
With all the hammering and tweaking, building and sweeping… we truly were in Santa’s workshop!
NORMA!!!
The most exciting part was that Stacey had recently designed a donkey pendant via Norma’s inspiration! Yup. My Norma got Stacey thinking about all of us needy donkey people. I told her that there were many of us out there and that donks are sorely overlooked in the jewelry department. So, voila! A donkey necklace! It isn’t finished in this photo, but you can see where she’s going with it.
HORSEY ITEMS
Leslie Anne Webb, another local artist and good friend, has a horse named Sam that she paints often. Leslie gave Stacey an image of Sam. That image of Sam is the base image of all of Stacey’s horse items. (Leslie Anne Webb website has mostly horse items and now miniatures!)
Here are some of the Sam items I was helping assemble.
MY FAVS
OK, I have to say that the custom pieces were my favs. I didn’t get to handle any of those because they are special order, but I loved looking at the photo and then seeing the outcome. Very fun!
CONTACT SANTA STACEY!
If you’d like any of her pieces, just go to the STACEY LAMOTHE STORE and click around. The pieces are divided by species. Or, if you want a special piece from a photo of your pet, just send her an email (info@staceylamotheart.com).
Who knows, maybe the piece that you purchase will have been assembled by me, Santa Stacey Elf! ;)
HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
