Just like the name says, we are pleased to feature a Michigan native today on the blog - Sarah Bannerman from Mitten Crafts by Sarah. She actually grew up nearby in Auburn, Michigan. Her and hubby have also spent time living in North Carolina and Texas, but eventually made their way back to Michigan to be close to family. Initially Sarah’s crafty interests laid in the epoxy world. This is a craft that seems to be very popular and trendy right now, but Sarah explains, “I didn’t want to deal with the mess of epoxy.” Which is my concern exactly when it comes to this kind of crafting too. The res ..read more

Grateful for this warmer weather and another opportunity to share about another talented maker that we work with here at Half Mile Handmade - Maria Lattanzio of Things Maria Makes based out of Ney Jersey! I could be wrong, but I think this is the first maker that we have featured on our blog from New Jersey :) She is a self taught graphic designer with a passion for straight up creating… anything and everything under the sun. She has a full-time job in brand marketing, but has had a “side hustle” going at all times since 2015. Initially, she started the hustle making and offering digital down ..read more

Spring has sprung and we are excited to introduce you to our maker for May. Most of the products that we have from her have total spring vibes and a pastel color pallet. So without further ado, we are pleased to introduce Johana Gutiérrez-Griffiths of JJ Paperie Co, She is a surface designer and engraver based in Conneticut. She explains, “I grew up as a hobbyist that loved trying out new things.” She dabbled in a lot including sketching fashion ideas, creating collages, sewing ribbon belts, and even interior design (aka rearranging her room constantly). After graduating college, she worked f ..read more

We feel like April is definitely a good month to introduce you to the maker Tangibles and what they do because we can all use some affirmations about warmer days ahead! Let us explain further… this months featured maker is Diana Yates of Tangibles. She is based in Columbus, Ohio where she works in marketing for the YWCA. When she isn’t working on her small biz she loves singing, volunteering, being active and hanging out with her family. Now what the heck is Tangibles and what do they do?! Diana explains, “during a dark time in my life, writing affirmations on post-it notes really helped me ..read more

A super fresh and clean feature coming your way this month (…foreshadowing), haha. We are pleased to introduce Dawn McKenzie-Wyatt of Kangaroo soaps. Dawn says “I’m am Aussie living in Brighton, Michigan” and she had never seen snow before moving to the mitten - wild for us Michiganders to imagine! No complaints from her though, she says they love being in Michigan. For as long as she can remember Dawn has had an appreciation for a good soap, and always had the desire to learn to make her own. So when she finally gave it a shot, she loved it and has been going hard in soap making ever since ..read more

For some reason, the last part of January felt like it dragged on for me, anyone else?! Here we are though, we made it to February and you know here at Half Mile Handmade a new month means we get to tell you all about a new maker. For February, we are featuring the talented Chelsie Tamms from Lettering Works - a graphic designer out of Chicago, Illinois. Chelsie shared that she had a spinal fusion surgery in the eighth grade which was a big push for focusing more on her art, as it was an activity that she was able to do post-op. At Bradley University she studied Spanish. graphic design, and m ..read more

Happy to be back from our blogging-break! Can you believe we haven’t done one of these since July of 2021?! We hope your 2022 is off to a wonderful start and we appreciate you taking a few minutes to stop here and read about our first featured maker of the new year - Craig Sterken of Craig Sterken Photography…any guesses where he came up with the name for his small business?! :) Craig has a ton of roots in lots of areas throughout Michigan. He spent his early days in the Grand Rapids area, raised his family in Essexville, and summer-vacations on the westside in Ludington and Sleeping Bear Dun ..read more

Summer is in full swing here in our city by the Bay and this month we’re introducing you to a maker that can accessorize you for this season and beyond. This month we are featuring Renae Michalski the owner and maker at Luna and Loki Design based near South Bend Indiana. Her start in this crafty adventure was in 2017 when leather jewelry started gaining popularity. At the time, it was quite hard to find so she started making her own, and like with many of our featured makers, friends and family wanted some too! Soon enough she started e-commerce and expanded her offering into many different t ..read more

Hello and happiest sunny times summer to all of you readers out there. We are back this month to tell you all about yet another talented maker that we are honored to work with. This month we are introducing Lisa Wiley from Ellembee based out of Wixom, Michigan. Lisa went to school for fashion design and was working in that industry when she was laid off unexpectedly. At that time, she moved back to Michigan from California to regroup and it was just about the time that Etsy was catching on. She knew a little bit about screen printing from a course in college, so she tried her hand at making s ..read more

Hello, hello and a very happy May to all of you! It’s a new month, which means we get to tell you all about a new maker; and this month it’s Tiffany Sabo from Duende Collection out of Port Huron, Michigan. She has lived in Michigan all her life excluding a few years in Illinois and Indiana during college. Tiffany has always loved the arts, especially fashion and photography and even took some sewing and photography classes as early as high school years. Her higher education studies took her in a more scientific direction, but she’s always had a creative thing on the side in some capacity. Af ..read more