We hope that 2025 has been good for you so far! It's been a winter wonderland here in SE Michigan, with some colder-than-usual temperatures but Sarah is loving the snow!

Our intention this year is to continue with our bi-monthly posts here but be a little bit more active on Instagram. We have some new products we are excited to tell you about and a new show format! Read on for more on that.

Mark's space got an upgrade! It was a LOT of work, and we didn't love moving all the machines up the stairs, but now he has more space, all the shops are in the same building (okay, not the forge), and there is an insulated room for finishing!

Can you believe it?! We are celebrating the one-year anniversary of Grafted Branch Artisans!!!! It's been quite a year and we have learned a LOT! There have also been a lot of changes. Let's do a brief recap.

It is probably past time to give you an update on what is going on around here. We have some exciting updates, for sure!

Our property was once a large dairy farm. The original barn and milkhouse are still here and we had a lot of options for what we could do with the milkhouse but in the end, we decided it was the perfect location for Mark's forge! How many people can say they have a forge in an old milkhouse or that their products were made in a milkhouse?

Welcome to Joe's domain! This is where our floor registers get made and where the weighted mantle hooks are assembled. Joe also has done several custom weld repair jobs. The shop space that you are about to see is actually fairly new.

The woodshop is very much Mark's domain. While we don't make a lot of wood products yet, a lot still happens in this shop. For one thing, Mark is constantly making projects for us/himself that allow him to practice and try new techniques that could be used for the business one day. And of course, our forged signatures and coat racks are made in here.

This product came into existence because of an odd vent in our house. We had a long, skinny vent in the floor in our hallway and getting something that would fit it would have had to be custom anyway so Dan asked Joe if he could weld one. Joe did and it looked (looks :) really cool. Carrie's dad kept telling us that we should sell them. When it was time to decide what products to start with, these seemed like an obvious choice.

It may be fair to say that this is the product that started it all. Mark made two for some friends of ours as an experiment. He had an idea and wanted to try it so he did and when people saw it, everyone said how that would be something people would buy. It's also the product that required the most work to get the process set up, which is why it was one of the last products we put on the site when we launched.

Carrie made her first name prayer all the way back in 2014 for Sarah's confirmation. She made them for Joe and Mark and other friends for confirmations and graduations. When we started brainstorming product ideas for the business, she decided that maybe other people would like these too.