Albany shop features local crafts

A newly opened gift and consignment shop may have come from a serendipitous situation, but its mission to highlight local artisans and increase community involvement is something its owner Janet Amundson has always valued.
All Things Together, located at 312 W. State St., Albany, is hosting its grand opening today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., hoping to bring people that have been shut in from the snowstorm out into the community.
The store only became a tangible plan in mid-December, but Amundson, a Redkey resident who works at Jay County Hospital, is excited to get people in to see what local artisans, including four from Jay County, have to show.
“A lot of gift and craft shops are things that are multi-produced. You walk into a Hallmark shop, it’s all multi-produced,” said Amundson. “These are original items for the most part. … It’s the satisfaction in knowing that each piece we create there’s nothing else out there like it.”
Watching over her booth at a Muncie craft show right before Christmas, a woman who was set up next to her suggested Amundson use a vacated building she owned in Albany to sell more handcrafted wares.
“She said, ‘If you open it, I have the building,’” said Amundson. “It worked out perfectly. … It’s just kind of something that really dropped into my lap.”
The woman simply asked that 10 percent of the profits go to her local church, which Amundson agreed to.
Amundson, who makes jewelry and other items while also working part-time at the hospital, took on the task of opening the shop in a little over a month, drawing inspiration for the name from her favorite Biblical scripture, Romans 8:28.
Looking for other vendors to contribute their handmade gifts, Amundson asked her artisan friend Beth Hunley if she’d like to spend time volunteering at the shop where Hunley could sell her own jewelry. From there, the shop snowballed with fellow crafters coming through Facebook and word of mouth, and the store now sells items from 17 different vendors, spanning from Kokomo to Richmond to Noblesville to Decatur.
“We just like promoting our own, and there’s so many good people out there with so many talents,” said Hunley, who began crafting and making jewelry after her brother died, as a way to heal alongside her sister. “There is a joy to it. … I had never made anything in my life. I didn’t think I had a creative bone in my body, but that was just our way of healing together. It just took off from there, and it hasn’t stopped.”
Through volunteers such as Hunley and those from Amundson’s own church, the store will be open five days a week, after originally being planned for only one day of sales a week.
The hours and days may change after seeing the kind of traffic that comes through the door, but Amundson will be happy just to know that customers find comfort in the store’s atmosphere.
“I want them to experience peace when they walk through that door,” said Amundson. “I want them to know that there’s nothing here that they’re going to take away that’s duplicate, as far as the handmade items. It’s unique.”
Selling jewelry, quilts, soap, stamps and tutus, as well as specialty items and locally authored books, the shop is meant to bring focus back to small towns and its local artisans.
“Our small towns are dying,” said Amundson. “I want to bring the local shopping back to our small towns, bring the revenue back to the small towns and to the local artists instead of sending it out of town, out of country, out of state.”
The shop will eventually host craft classes in the evening once a month as well as book signings for the authors who have items in its special book nook.
Instead of just a place to buy things, Amundson hopes the store becomes a place to socialize and pass on her love of handmade crafts.
“I just want it to be a place people look forward to coming to,” said Amundson. “Come in, sit down and talk with us a while.”[[In-content Ad]]