Cyber crafters help one another make and market homemade items

Who knew there was a market for "iPoo"?

Kimberly Smith of Kent was looking for a creative outlet and maybe a little extra cash when she quit her job as a clothing designer at Nordstrom to stay home with her two young boys.

She took her computer, a heat press and "a pretty sarcastic sense of humor" into her basement office and started cranking out T-shirts and baby onesies after her kids were asleep each night, stamped with phrases like:

• "Mommy drinks because I whine"

• "Boob man"

• And the top-selling, Apple-inspired "iPoo." (Also available in "iPee" and "iPuke.")

Advice for cybercrafters


Interested in selling your crafts online? Some lessons learned by local crafters:

Take good pictures. That's key in drawing people to your Web site. And learn to say no. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement when people want to buy what you make. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed with more business than you want to handle.

— Rachel Shepard, Fall City printmaker

Treat customers like gold. Ask them to pass your business card along to friends and family. Develop a thick skin. Crafting is so much more personal than mass-producing — when a customer is unhappy with your product, it's easy to take it personally. You don't have to reinvent the wheel; take an existing product and improve on it or tweak it to make it your own. Focus on one aspect of the product you really want to emphasize (low price, innovation or quality).

— Beth Ramsay, Bothell sewer of baby products

Create a brand. Have a name or image that is eye-catching and easy to remember. Pay attention to the details, such as your labels, hangtags and packaging. Be passionate about your craft and your product; it may take time to find your niche in the market. Use blogging as a promotional tool — people love to know about the person behind the craft. Blog about your creations and people who inspire you, and mix in some personal life for interest.

— Tif Fussell, Sammamish sewer of vintage clothes and accessories

Nearly 725 sales later, Smith's little basement venture is bringing in nearly as much as she earned working full time — "except I get to do this in the hours that suit me."

Smith is one of thousands of local indie crafters riding a wave of growing interest in all things handmade. Many are finding buyers for their homespun crafts online, particularly on a two-year-old Web site called Etsy.com, a giant online handicraft bazaar sometimes compared to eBay.

"People aren't satisfied anymore shopping at big-box stores," said Smith, 27, who sells her clothes online under the name Mama Monkey. "With handmade, there's a history. There's a story. People love that."

Growing appreciation

Handmade is hot again. But we're not talking about woven potholders, macraméd wall hangings or Grandma's crocheted doilies.

The new handmade is flip, funky, functional, fun — hip crafts with a sense of humor and a modern twist.

Etsy is the largest of a handful of Web sites opening new markets for indie crafters, helping buyers and sellers find each other at a time when interest in one-of-a-kind creations is rising.

Nearly 2,000 Washington sellers have virtual storefronts on Etsy, which claims 490,000 handcrafted items for sale.

Where to find crafters online


Etsy.com: The largest of the online crafting sites features 50,000 sellers. Search by category, color, seller location.

Cutxpaste.com: Jewelry, clothes, paper goods and more from dozens of crafters selling their wares by consignment.

CraftMall.com: More than 1,000 items, including handmade soaps, handbags and quilts.

HandmadeCatalog.com: Search by category, including reusable "ecology" bags and necklace-style badge holders.

Artsefest.com: Search by crafter, with links to more than 800 sites selling everything from birdhouses to wreaths.

Many Seattle-area sellers also appear in local craft shows, including I Heart Rummage, Seattle's longest-running indie craft show. It's held the first Sunday of most months at the Crocodile Cafe: www.iheartrummage.com.

Seattle-area Etsy sellers featured in this story (search under "seller" on Etsy.com with no spaces between the words):

dottie angel: Sells hand-embellished slips, bags and other items "with a vintage vibe."

DrewBaby Designs: Sells custom-made baby slings, diaper bags, shoes and other items.

Mama Monkey: Sells custom T-shirts, baby onesies and other garments.

Starparticle Press: Makes hand-pressed stationery, cards and other paper products.

The offerings range from practical (a hand-knitted iPod case, $10) to creative (a single high-heeled pump decoupaged with images of feet, $125) to offbeat (a pair of blue-tasseled earplugs, $5.99).

You could drop thousands of dollars on furniture, photographs and paintings on Etsy. But the average price is between $12 and $15.

Shoppers are growing to appreciate good design, artful materials, the look and feel of something unique, some crafters say, and they are increasingly interested in the origins of things in their lives.

"Everywhere you go, it's like a carbon-copy item. Whether you're in London or Peoria, it's the same factory-produced shirt at the Gap from somewhere in Macau. I think a lot of people my age are fed up with that," said Matthew Stinchcomb, 31, head of marketing for Etsy.com, based in New York.

A thread of social consciousness also runs through the indie-crafting world. Crafters talk about supporting individuals rather than big corporations, about fair wages, about re-establishing the one-on-one connection between buyer and seller that existed before automation and mass production.

One-woman show

While her four kids are in school, Tif Fussell of Sammamish often browses area thrift shops with an eye out for used garments and fabric "with a vintage vibe" she could use in making her handcrafted slips, bags and cushions.

Back in her bedroom studio, Fussell dyes the garments and adds embellishments like lace, buttons and other trimmings, many of them originally from the collections of her mother and grandmother.

The result: delicate slips in soft colors with handfelted flowers, ribbons and frayed cotton adornments to be worn under skirts or over jeans. Price: $40 to $64.

"Upcycling" is a popular theme in the new crafting movement — taking something old or used and giving it a makeover with new elements that change its appearance or function.

Crafters make wineglass charms of fishing lures and turn postage stamps into magnets. One crafter recently listed a small jewel box patched together out of "an empty mint tin, gold paint, the top of a Christmas ornament and an emerald plastic jewel."

Fussell opened her online store, called dottie angel, in February and sold her first piece a week later. She also recently launched a blog and her own Web site under that name, and she has her creations in a couple of area boutiques.

"I never really thought I'd see people buy my stuff," said Fussell, 38. "I thought, 'Why would anybody pay for that?' But they buy because they don't have time or don't know how" to do it themselves.

"I think a couple generations lost the ability to handcraft. It was like a backlash against it. We don't teach crafts anymore. And now people want to learn — but they want to change it and make it more modern."

Fussell can't imagine ever being able to mass-produce enough for her business to get much bigger.

"It must stay handcrafted to stay dottie angel," she said. "There's only me at the end of the day in my little studio, juggling four kids. There's only so much you can do in a week."

A support network

Many of the new cybercrafters in the Seattle area do their crafting on the side, after taking care of kids, households and sometimes a day job. Some have given up the day jobs, though, and use crafting to fund a stay-at-home lifestyle.

"I make enough to keep myself in Starbucks and to pay for lunches with my friends," jokes Beth Ramsay, a former labor-and-delivery nurse in Bothell who now stays home with her 19-month-old son, Drew.

Ramsay makes baby slings out of her Bothell home, sewing sashes of brightly colored fabric during Drew's naps and in the evenings. She hasn't tracked her profits but estimates it might be $300 to $500 a month, enough to feel she is contributing to the household budget.

She didn't so much launch her business as she backed into it. Her friends started asking about the slings she made to carry her son. Then their friends started asking.

Now it's turned into something of a calling. Carried babies are happier babies, Ramsay said, and she believes her slings help promote that message.

"Now I'm kind of thinking if I had more time, I might want to make a go of this," said Ramsay, 34.

Like Ramsay, many crafters say they started out selling on eBay but were turned off by the fees and felt their crafts got overlooked in the behemoth marketplace.

Specialty Web sites such as Etsy are more supportive, they say, with online forums where crafters swap ideas and get advice on improving their creations.

Many sellers say the crafting Web sites are now the first place they turn for gift shopping. Many cross-promote each other, bartering crafts with each other and tucking each other's business cards into their orders before shipping.

"I would much rather support a small venture — another stay-at-home mom — than a big corporation," Ramsay said. "Rather than wondering if some child made this in Malaysia, I love knowing someone's hands touched the thing I'm buying."

Lucky breaks

In a way, Rachel Shepard owes Martha Stewart a thank-you note for getting her business under way.

And Martha would probably think it was a good thing indeed to receive one of Shepard's cards, hand-pressed on a 19th-century, cast-iron letterpress Shepard has in her studio, housed inside a barn next to her house in Fall City.

Shepard, 27, made her own wedding invitations four years ago and serendipitously sent the designs off to a Canadian letterpress printer approached by Martha Stewart Weddings magazine looking for unique wedding invitations. Shepard's designs were featured, and calls from new customers started coming.

When she was pregnant with her son, Leif, now 17 months, Shepard quit her job as a graphic designer at Microsoft and bought the letterpress. Now she makes baby announcements, stationery and other paper products sold online under the name Starparticle Press, shipping orders in the U.S. and overseas.

Shepard said she's busy enough now that she's starting to turn work away.

"My primary thing is to want to stay home and enjoy my crafting, and it's a bonus to be able to have a business without much investment of time or money," she said.

"When I'm ready and he's ready, I may pursue this as a full-time gig. For now, this is fun."

Jolayne Houtz: 206-464-3122 or jhoutz@seattletimes.com