I made this Santa from my mother’s jewelry and it’s the only thing keeping me breathing through my first Christmas without her. She died in September and left behind boxes of costume jewelry, decades of brooches and earrings and necklaces she’d collected from thrift stores and estate sales. My sister wanted to donate it all, said it was just cheap stuff nobody would want, but I couldn’t let strangers paw through the sparkly things my mom touched and loved for fifty years.
I spent three weeks gluing every single piece onto this Santa face, and with each brooch I attached I remembered her wearing it, remembered specific Christmases and family dinners and ordinary Tuesdays when she’d pin something shiny to her sweater just because it made her happy. Those pearls making up his beard are from the necklace she wore to my wedding. The red rhinestones in his hat are from earrings she bought the day I was born. Every piece of this Santa is a memory of her hands, her joy, her belief that cheap jewelry could be beautiful if you loved it enough.
When I finished it I sat on my bedroom floor holding this heavy glittering Santa made from my mother’s entire lifetime of collecting sparkly things, and I finally cried the way I haven’t been able to since she died. My daughter saw it and asked if Grandma would have liked it, and I had to explain that this IS Grandma, that every shine and pearl is her still here with us, still making Christmas magical even though she’s gone. I started creating custom memory pieces on Tedooo app using people’s inherited jewelry, transforming costume brooches and broken necklaces into art their families can actually display instead of hide away in guilt and grief.
This Santa isn’t just decoration. It’s my mother’s joy preserved in the exact things that brought her happiness, proof that the stuff my sister called worthless was actually priceless because it was hers. Every pearl and rhinestone is her still here, still sparkling, still refusing to let death make her invisible
