Happy Monday

Happy Monday Everyone, hope you had a great weekend!  We were busy this weekend even though it was rainy and nasty.  And when I got to my work bench this weekend to begin working on our latest project I found the following sign strategically placed at my work bench (and I love saying I having a work bench in our garage, not sure why...lol).  Someone thinks he is funny!!  Made me chuckle.

 
I guess its fitting since just last week I was saying how in college I wasn't allowed to play with power tools.  Although admittedly I am not exactly graceful, but thankful I have learned my way around the required tools and have loved showing our creativity through wood creations.

This weekend we started working on our coastal collection, and decided to take a quick trip down to the beach and created an improptu advertising photo on our own beach.  I have to admit my mom started our writings in the sand advertising.  Last year we started a writings in the sand photography series and my mom suggested we do the same for our name also, and for our impromptu trip this weekend it was Matt's genius that suggested the particular idea below.  Its a good thing we are never far from our cameras on our beach adventures.  More on our photography in a few weeks.  But the below photo is to announce our upcoming American Made Gifts (AMG): Coastal Collection.

I am so excited about what will be coming this week, its definitely unique and original, and completely our own design.  And here is a sneak peak as to what is coming this week .... and we will have plenty to put up for sale!

Oops, guess you will have to wait till I can step away from our custom order and get them painted and/or stained and finished so I can post pictures.  But we promise it will be worth the wait!  Today I have been steady away on a custom order for a friends child's room.  The John Deere Logo with the child's name cut-out and painted.  Don't get me wrong we love, love, love coming up with new ideas and creating unique pieces, but we enjoy the challenge of a custom order.  Creating something that someone else envisions, its a challenge and lots of hard work, and occasionally takes a few re-dos...simply because we are both perfectionists!  But today has been so much fun and we cannot wait till it finds its new home.  My brilliant brush strokes for your viewing entertainment...ok so its not that breath taking but it entertains me.  And I enjoy any reason to take a photo.  Now my excuse for taking photos is "I am doing it for the blog"...who can argue with that?

Well I hope you all stay tuned and keep following us to see what new things we have in store.  The photography portion of this will be set up shortly, we are still figuring out the best way to go about it, but I will start posting some of the prints for sale very soon.

Enjoy your week!!

Mosaic Wooden Love Signs

I can't believe how fast this has week has gone, but we have been busy coming up with new designs and new ideas.  Last year we created a wooden mosaic sign to go over our bed (instead of the hunting picture that was there before ;-) ) and we had quite a few people who really liked it, and to be honest we were really happy with how it turned out also.  Below is the one we created for our bedroom.

However I wasn't too entirely fond of the font we used, it was just a little too wonky for me.  So when we decided to make a few that were similar this week I decided to try a different font.  I just love the patchwork look to these signs.  We had lots of fun putting this together.

Though Matt is usually the master behind the power tools, I'm finding that I love working in our shop just as much as he does.  It feels slightly liberating to be able to work next to him and actually know what I am doing now.  I'm not the most graceful, and prior to my new found joy the hot glue gun was as dangerous of a tool that I was allowed, and all us women can certainly attest to the ferocity of these little gems, darn things will give you blisters.  Even in college during an art school wood working class they suggested I stay away from all things with a blade, but thankfully I have made peace with these tools and can now build just about anything and even know what I am talking about when going to Lowe's and Home Depot.  Well that is my little major accomplishment in life and I am certainly glad I did, so many wonderful things to create!  This is the work in progress for our Mosaic Love Signs, I think they look great!

After getting to this point I thought they could use a little glitter, and the Gold Heart (furthest sign away) was not standing out very well against the wood tones, so I thought some glitter might help.  Below are the two finished products.

As much as I love the idea of the gold hearts, I really think the teal is working for me best.  I have two more to complete and I am thinking of doing another in teal and one in coral, sans glitter, but I guess it just depends on how I am feeling when I go to work on them.  So last week I mentioned us working on a custom sign for a child's room, we got the letters cut out for it and wanted to share the progress.  I actually did get it painted today but it was drying and didn't want to chance moving it around just yet.

I love custom orders, it is so much fun to actually be making something for someone specific.  Knowing in advance who it's for, ok I guess I'm just Queen of the obvious, but I do enjoy that aspect.  Aside from the custom order and mosaic signs I am also working on building up our stock of Wooden American Flags.  Aside from the time it takes to actually make one of them from start to finish they are simply my favorite thing we make.  I love looking at ours on the wall in our living room.  Seen below...

So we still have more new things to come and if you ever want to purchase something just email us at AmericanMadeGifts@gmail.com, you can follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/americanmadegifts, and Pinterest or Instagram.  If you purchase anything from us we would love to see how you have used it in your home, either tag us on facebook, Instagram or just use #americanmadegifts.

Hope you had a fantastic Thursday and an even better Friday tomorrow!

We Are Back...

So we are getting our blog up and started again, and it does sorta feel like I am writing to myself as we are new to blogging and do not have any followers.  But my hopes are that, that will change here in the near future.  We have lots of fun things coming up and I have some new equipment that will allow us to even further create some custom pieces.

That's right we now are doing custom cutouts, names, monograms and shapes.  The logo above is unfinished and I will post finished versions very soon.  Currently we are working on a project for a friend, a child's name cut-out and painted along with the John Deere Logo, can't wait to post how that turns out.  And as always our Wooden American Flags, and this year we have two different sizes, our large sign that we started out creating and now a little bit smaller version that costs a little bit less.  

As you can see we are hard at work getting these flags ready to go online and find new homes.  New coastal signs are coming soon as well as coastal cut-outs.  Please keep following us to see what's new, you can always order anything you see us post on here simply by sending us an email to americanmadegifts@gmail.com or if you have something custom you would like to order email us your idea for a price quote.  We have done business logos that turn out great also, so please send us an email!

Also you can follow us on instagram: AmericanMadeGifts or Pinterest!

Can't wait to post what we have coming next!

Friends & Family

Two of our friends who are more like faimly put in the very first order for one of our Wooden American Signs.  I am so happy to say they received it this weekend and loved it!!  These two amazing people have been close friends of mine since college and I have been so blessed to call them family over the years.  They just recently bought their first house and we feel so privalaged to be able to share a in small part of them creating their home.  So we could not resist leaving a special message on the back of their sign!

James served in the Military for 4 years, and LK makes sure that he knows his time serving our country does not go un-noticed or un-appreciated!  I have no doubts that their flag will proudly be displayed in their home as a reminder of his and all the other men and women who have served.  Like many who have served, James is very humble about accepting gratitude for his time in the Military.  

We were able to ship the sign to them, and they received it this weekend!  I can't wait to get pictures of it displayed in their house!  If they are ok with it I will share how they have displayed it!

This is their sign all ready for shipping!  I am so excited to get working on the other orders coming in!  If anyone is interested please send us an email at americanmadegifts@gmail.com.

First Post, So Welcome Everyone

Good Morning Everyone:

My name is Chrystal and my boyfriends name is Matt. We have started American Made Photography and Gifts to share our passion for photography and crafts.  I have had a love of photography for as long as I can remember and have always loved creating art in various forms.  Matt has always be interested in photography and dabbled in it here and there. He has always enjoyed making things with wood (and fixing thing, very fortunate for me who is only mildly handy).  It wasn't until I handed him my camera once on the beach during a sunrise photo session that I realized I would never get the camera back!  I even went to school for photography, and he picked it up in minutes!!  But we share very similar hobbies and that has been the driving force for us to begin to share the things we create with anyone who is interested.

We both love nature photography, and have a love for the beach, the ocean and fishing! So much of our inspiration comes from the ocean as we both grew up in a small town on the East Coast, and now live in Florida (talk about a perfect fit).  We have begun to create wooden signs for our home (we are huge DIY'ers) and found that many were interested in the things we started creating.  The first thing we have created was a coastal inspired wooden American flag.  We wanted something that looked weathered and would go with our beach decor, so we finally came up with the wooden American flag that is now for sale.

 

 

We have actually had quite a few orders come in already. We love having a hobby that we can do together.  Matt is the one who does the measuring and puts them together (I'm not really a fan of math...lol). We both work on wood burning all the stripes in the boarder and all 50 stars, and I do the paint mixing and painting.  It takes quite a long time to wood burn and paint, but we are getting a little faster at it as we go.

 

 

 

We have two orders complete as of now and are shipping our first sign off to some great friends of mine who purchased the first flag!  Two more orders are in the process of being completed this week!  Quite exciting!  It does take awhile as we both do this in our spare time and on the weekends.  Matt is in the Air Force, and I work as a Convention Manager.  So this is something that keeps us working together.  There are tons of photography that we have taken over the last year here in Navarre, Florida. We are looking forward to offering our photography for sale soon.

 

 

 

 

It all takes time!  If you are interested in any of our photography or our signs please let us know.  As we get more inventory we will be working on setting up a website where you can purchase directly.  Until then I will be posting some photography and images in our blog.

 

Everyone have a great Monday!