She Came Home to the Mountains. Then She Built Something Worth Staying For.

There is a particular kind of place that stops you at the threshold. Not because of a sign or a display, but because the air feels different inside — warmer, more considered, as if every object has been chosen with quiet intention. Artful Ellijay, set on the square in the small mountain town of Ellijay, Georgia, is precisely that kind of place.

Visitors walk in and say, almost without fail: I wish I could live in this store.

Samantha Gabriel, the woman behind it, takes that as the highest possible compliment. As it turns out, she spent the last four years building the answer.

That answer — a fully furnished log cabin above Mountaintown Creek — is available now through Locélle. Read about Artful Home, the property Samantha designed from the ground up.

Rooted in Place

Samantha's connection to Ellijay is not incidental — it is the foundation of everything she has built here. In 2006, her parents purchased a hundred-acre farm in the North Georgia hills and began making the drive up from Atlanta every weekend. They would go on the tractor, swim in the creek, and return to the city carrying a quietness that suburban life couldn't provide.

"Ellijay just really became this place of like home," she says. And that word — home — is the one that has shaped everything since.

Her father was a serial entrepreneur with an instinct for possibility; her mother brought a refined interior sensibility to every space she touched. Both took root in Samantha in ways she would only fully understand later. In 2016, she and her husband married on that same family land. The mountains had always been home, in the truest sense of the word.

A St

The idea for Artful Ellijay arrived in 2017, amid the particular chaos of early motherhood — a new baby, a husband working eighty-hour weeks, a growing awareness that something essential was missing. When Samantha's father found a building on the Ellijay square and invited them to dream alongside him, she understood immediately what it could become.

The vision was unhurried and clear. Not a boutique in the conventional sense, but a hub for local artisans — a place where handcrafted, one-of-a-kind pieces could find the homes they deserved. More than that, a space built around feeling: the quiet beauty of everyday objects, the warmth of gathered spaces, the idea that the things we surround ourselves with should add meaning to our lives.

"When we first imagined the store, we weren't just thinking about retail," Samantha reflects. "We were thinking about the feeling of home."

Artful Ellijay opened in 2018. Along with their one-year-old son, Samantha and her husband moved to Ellijay and began building the thing they had imagined.

The Aesthetic

Every decision — from the natural wood tones and soft linens to the handmade objects and vintage-inspired pieces — reflects an intention to choose warmth over spectacle, timelessness over trend. The styling sits between rustic mountain charm and refined simplicity, with a balance that feels collected rather than decorated.

"I love being a shopkeeper," Samantha says. "I love creating spaces that people walk into and they just want to wander through." The experience of visiting is genuinely unhurried: collect a coffee from Dos Coffee House across the square and spend forty-five minutes discovering locally made jams and jellies, coffee table books, found objects, and one-of-a-kind furnishings that carry their own quiet history.

There is something for the casual weekender spending a long Saturday in the mountains, and something equally compelling for the serious design client beginning a ground-up project. As Samantha puts it: "There's something for everyone. It's not just for the person looking to redesign their home."

"The things we surround ourselves with should add meaning to our lives."

Growing with the Region

What began as a single shop expanded naturally. Full interior design services came first, then a separate design showroom, then a team of six designers and nearly twenty-six staff at the business's peak. When 2020 shifted the world and city buyers began transforming their North Georgia second homes into primary residences, Artful Ellijay was already precisely where the demand arrived — a destination for people who wanted beauty, warmth, and design that felt rooted rather than imported.

Loss, and a Return to Joy

The sudden death of her father in 2023 brought everything into relief. Grief has a way of clarifying what is essential, and Samantha found herself reassessing scale, pace, and meaning.

"I turned to my husband and I said, 'My joy is gone. I want to find the joy again.'" That honesty led to a series of deliberate choices. The design center closed. The team grew smaller. What remained was the thing she had always loved most.

"We decided to go back to the beginning of what I loved about the store to begin with."

She returned, deliberately, to joy. And to the work of being a shopkeeper.

The Store Today

To visit Artful Ellijay now is to understand what is possible when a space is tended by someone who genuinely cares. The store carries its full range — furnishings and decor alongside locally made jams and jellies, coffee table books, guest books, and the kind of found objects that earn their place on a shelf.

Interior design services remain available — from single-room refreshes to full new builds — all carrying the same unhurried, considered sensibility that has always defined the work.

And somewhere in every visit, the refrain surfaces again: I wish I could live in this store.

Samantha heard it so many times she built the answer. That answer is available now, for the first time, through Locélle.

Artful Home — the fully furnished log cabin Samantha designed above Mountaintown Creek — is listed exclusively on Locélle. View the property and inquire directly with the owner.

Artful Ellijay  ·  10 North Main Street, Downtown Ellijay, Georgia

Open to visitors and design clients alike.

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