February 17, 2008

Enamored with Etsy: An ungrrl confessional

I found it by accident. It was a link below a friend’s painting I’d been admiring - a black cat under a starry, Van Gogh-esque sky. I clicked. The rest is shopping history, and makes an interesting case study of a girl who finds few things as unnatural and painful as a trip to the mall or grocery store.

Etsy.com is a true virtual marketplace of artisans and craftspeople around the world selling their handmade stuff. And by stuff I mean everything from art to jewelry to apparel to handbags (hey, that may be the first time I’ve ever used that word in conversation), to dishes to wind chimes to plaster wall stars and homemade peanut butter dog treats. For someone like me, pathetically gift-challenged and 74% anti-consumer (unless it involves books, cameras, hardware/building materials, office supplies and a number of geek-nologies most of my friends and family members have never heard of) this was an intriguing outpost of non-chain-store goodness. I spent more than an hour in there that day.

I started frequenting Etsy as birthdays and holidays rolled around on the calendar. Suddenly, my gift-giving repertoire extended beyond books, beer and framed, candid photos of my children. Before I knew it I was buying hand-fired rømmegrøt bowls from Las Cruces, birch bark picture frames from Fort Wayne, sand pebble pendants from Chesapeake Bay, hand-knit caps from Vancouver, painted portraits of penguins from Chicago!

One day not long ago I found the Etsy Finds email list. Now, every day, I watch and wait for my email from the Etsy lady, an adventure unto itself with the newest listings of groovy handmade stuff from the Etsy universe. Stuff like analog rings that double as microphones and dread braids and brass postcard necklaces. It’s too much, I cannot stop.

I’ve had my eye on a set of custom-carved plasterboard letters for a few weeks: my name the perfect last-touch of the remodel, plastered across the wall behind me in the studio, self-important agency-style. Don’t you think?

« Previous entry

Add this to …

One Comments