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St. Louis Moms: Crow Steals Fire is Metal Smithing Mom

Ever have your kid bring you a broken toy or maybe a piece of jewelry that came undone? And then you look at that destroyed mess and say, “I can totally make that better. Grab the pliers kid!”

No? Well it happened to Donna Fox, a not-so-typical mom in St. Louis County.

See, Donna’s daughter broke a stretchy bracelet a couple years ago. That led to a trip to the craft store, which led to a new supplies for her basement studio, a PTA craft fair and before you know it… an Esty shop.

Donna now sells her gorgeous creations as “Crow Steals Fire.” Interesting name right? I had to ask her about it and Donna told me how she was fascinated by the intelligent crow, an animal who turns up in creation stories in many different cultures. Many tales have the crow getting in trouble with fire, sometime resulting in turning its feathers black. Since Donna is a bit of a poet who likes her jewelry to tell stories, the crow was a nice fit. It even provides her merchandise with a catch phrase: always distracted by shiny.

You can find her jewelry on Esty, and also at few nice boutiques around town: Artistic Meanderings, E. L. Riley, The Foundrie,  Serendipity Gifts, Local Lucy’s, Mind Works Gallery at Prestige and Honey and Sweetie’s.

Crow Steals Fire offers handcrafted metal jewelry. As in, Donna cuts, hammers, files, stamps and polishes it all herself. She adds neat little touches like charms (which she gets from other artists) or wire wrapped beads. Let me show you a couple of pieces:

crow_lineup

Pretty cool, huh? Donna has this other really neat technique where she takes a special silver clay–think Sculpey mixed with real silver dust–and stamps it with an old wax seal or a neat vintage button. The stamped clay is kiln fired, resulting in a unique fine silver charm! Donna has a few complete alphabet sets of these wax seals, as well as really cool animals and crests.

Crow Steals Fire

 

Since Donna is allergic to cheap metal–seriously, she breaks out in a killer rash–she only uses quality, hypo-allergenic metal in her work. All her stuff is made of aluminum, copper, brass, silver or gold.

The charms at Crow Steals Fire are pretty reasonably priced too. You can find earrings starting at $21 and some nice layered pieces for $40 to $60 dollars. I think the most expensive item I spotted was around $150.

Her jewelry is also extremely customizable. If you visit her online shop, or one of the St. Louis boutiques, you can mix and match the charms to get exactly what you want. Just remember that since items from Crow Steals Fire ARE made to order there’s a little wait to get it just right. She has a two week turn around on orders.

She also takes her own photos for the Etsy shop and blogs about her creations.

If you like what you’re seeing here, check out Crow Steals Fire! If you want to order something for Christmas, you should probably get to it this fall. Or just pop by one of the boutiques listed for cash and carry items.

I’m definitely dropping hints for my hubby.