Etsy in the Press: Creative Ventures
June has been buzzing with talk of crafty entrepreneurship. Where to begin? How about Sydney Stoyan's heart warming tale of her Etsy experience in the National Post? It is our favorite kind of story: buyer needs necklace, buyer finds Etsy, buyer meets seller, they start a friendship. Buyer goes on to form …
For the Birds
Etsy seller Bugtussle has come up with an interesting way to give fabric and fiber scraps a second life.I have been making "bird giving balls" for years now and giving them out as gifts to friends. I have a flock of sheep, and some of the fleece was not good enough to use in my yarn, so as not to waste anything I …
Earth Tones Tip: Self-Watering Garden Planters care of Instructables
This week's Earth Tones Tip comes care of aperkins01096 on Instructables, which is a very useful site full of user-generated photo how-tos. This how-to covers how to convert milk jugs into self-watering garden planters. Super easy, and a great way to recycle! Click on the image below to get the full …
Fresh Shops: burrowburrow
burrowbrurrow caught my eye while browsing Etsy, as I noticed they had just opened their doors on May 22nd, 2008. (Very new!) I love the expressive detail put into each piece and the unique choices of animals. Below are a few questions I sent the artist so that she could introduce herself.Can you tell us a little …
Fresh Shops: jalexstudios
I consider myself to be pretty eco-savvy: I have solar panels on my roof, I walk to work most days (subway the rest) and haven’t used a plastic bag for my lunch since I don’t know when. Yet at a birthday party last week I was mortified as a neighbor reached into the trash to pull out a bottle cap I had just discarded …
Earth Tones: Make Like a Tree, Part 2
In her first post in our Earth Tones series, Autumn aka stringtheory revealed a troubling and often unrecognized issue in the modern crafting movement's efforts to be eco-friendly: mass-produced supplies. In this second post, she offers some solutions to the latent harm many of our craft supplies have …
Etsy Finds: Upcycled Beer Notebook
We all know the importance of recycling beer cans and bottles, but what about their cardboard receptacles? Sure, you can recycle these as well, but isn't that a little...well, predicatable? Ivylanedesigns has found a use for these and other familiar household packages. This artist uses her talents to make a …
Etsy Finds: Fused Plastic Bags
It's been almost a year since I wrote up a tutorial on the old Etsy Labs blog on fusing plastic bags. Since then, we've taught tons of people to iron their trash into fun fake tyvek and even made a video or two about it. And we weren't the only ones experimenting with this upcycling technique — I searched the …
Fresh Shops: Verne
While browsing Pounce Undiscovered the other day, I came upon the sweetest little purse from Verne. It was an unusual slightly trapezoidal shape, with a classy row of matching buttons as an accent. One click later, I learned that this little purse was even more remarkable: it was made from a salvaged men's …
