Our Story
What started in my mother Marcela's living room over 35 years ago has gone through many evolutions since. I was nine years old when it began — small handmade keepsakes sold at school craft fairs, growing into a business with employees who became family, and pieces that found their way into department stores and high-end boutiques around the world.
My mom has always had a true gift for beauty — an eye for creating the kind of precious, one-of-a-kind pieces that people fall in love with. If you know her, you know exactly what I mean. That gift is the heart of everything we make.
Years later, after building a career of my own in New York City, I felt the pull to come home. I joined her to begin the next chapter, and Marcela Creations became Marcela Gifts — narrowed and refined around the finest children's gifts and apparel, still made with the same handmade heart my mom started with.
Through every evolution, one thing has stayed the same: a belief that the moments families hold most dear deserve to be marked with something as individual as the memory itself. What began in my mother's living room has come full circle into a mother-daughter business, and now I'm carrying it forward the way she once carried it for me.
What keeps me going isn't the volume of orders — it's the stories behind them. A mom coming back for her second child's baby book. A grandmother returning for her seventh grandchild's keepsake. A bride who once celebrated her wedding with one of our memory books, returning years later for her own child's. First birthdays, 50th anniversaries, christenings — so many of life's milestones, held in something made by hand. Every customer has a story, and it means the world to me that families keep coming back to create the next one with us.
Building Something to Last — From Tampa to Clearwater
This year marks our latest evolution: we closed our Tampa retail store and moved our home base to Clearwater, to simplify and strengthen the business for what's ahead.
Closing our store wasn't easy. It meant losing something we loved — the chance to connect face-to-face with the Tampa community, to meet families who discovered us by walking through our door. Part of us always felt Tampa needed a store like ours. But focusing on wholesale and e-commerce gave us the flexibility to run this business in a way that still puts family first — our own included.