As San Francisco prepares to welcome its annual Chinese New Year Festival and Parade, to celebrate the Year of the Snake, the people who build the floats for the parade are busy with the finishing touches.

“It’s really cool that there is so much hand-built artwork on display,” said Lacey Bryant.

This will be Bryant’s 10th year creating sculptures for the floats in the parade.

“Every animal is going to teach me something new,” she said.

And creating for the Year of the Snake certainly has offered learning opportunities.

“This one was kind of a challenge because it had to float most of its body up in the air,” she said, pointing towards an intricate design. “So, it only touches the float in a couple of spots. It’s kind of a cool sculptural piece really.”

She’ll make around a dozen sculptures for the parade. It’ll take her anywhere from a few days to a week to carve each one. Some are small; some are quite big.

“This particular one is 9 feet this way, 6 feet this way, and 8 feet this way,” she said.

Bryant said she loves getting to work on large-scale projects like the ones in the parade.

“It’s a fun process. It’s like there’s a puzzle that I have to figure out,” she said. “They get to be big and exciting, and I like that.”

San Francisco’s Chinese New Year Parade is the biggest parade celebrating the Lunar New Year outside of Asia.

“The amount of manpower and women power that’s going into the design, the fabrication, the installation, the decoration — It’s a huge, huge effort by a very talented group of people,” said Stephanie Mufson, owner of the Parade Guys, the company that builds the floats. “They’re something that we put so much love and effort into this, just seeing it bring the joy to all the people around is really gratifying and rewarding.”

That is one of the many reasons why Lacey keeps coming back to create.

“It’s wonderful to be a part of it. It’s such an important event for the city and the community here,” she said.

Come parade time, when she sees people smile when they see her creations, it brings a big smile to her face.

“Oh, it’s wonderful. There’s really nothing like it,” she said.