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Kirsten Cram writes short stories to personalize her portraits of melancholy girls.
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Desert Companion
J U L Y / / A U G U ST 2 0 1 0
For some, business picks up enough to turn their hobby into a full-time job. Connie Norsworthy began selling vinyl wall decals — think a robot for the kids’ room or a monogram in the kitchen — in her shop Circleline Studio (CircleLineStudio.etsy. com) a year ago. Mentions in the New York Times holiday shopping guide and other publications have her business booming, receiving about 35 orders a week. Norsworthy gets up at 5 a.m. to fill orders, trades e-mails with customers in between trips to the bus stop with her three children, and often sneaks downstairs after her family is in bed to dream up new decals. “I love it. I wish I could put more hours into it,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like work.” It’s easy to get attached to customers, Norsworthy says. For example, a woman from the Midwest recently asked Norsworthy to design a custom decal for her daughter — but the woman was concerned about the price because her husband had just been laid off. Several months after the sale, she wrote to let Norsworthy know he’d found work. “It felt so good to know. I’m glad they’re doing okay now,” she says. “It’s nice to have a little bit of a connection with people.” It’s that connection that you won’t find at the mall or Overstock.com. The brand-building that large companies try to orchestrate through social media comes naturally to Etsy sellers, who foster bonds with customers by setting up blogs, Twitter feeds, Flickr accounts and Facebook pages linked to their shops — but that are just as often linked to their lives.
Mary Beth Heishman’s work reveals her native Las Vegan sensibility.
Kirsten Cram, owner of Tollipop (Tollipop.etsy.com), posts on her blog almost daily, sharing musings on her home life with her three daughters — where they play stringed instruments and eat vegetarian Indian stew out of adorable patterned bowls — and writing fictional stories that correspond with the paintings of quirky, melancholy little girls she sells in her Etsy shop. “It’s neat and sometimes even unsettling how much [readers] feel like they know me,” Cram says. “I’ve had people say, ‘If I’m ever in Las Vegas, I’ll be dropping by your house for sure.’ I think, ‘Oh really? Wow.’ It’s so sweet, but now it’s a little personal.” Cram, a stay-at-home mom, began selling paintings and prints two years ago after her own mother died. A few months after her mother’s death, she got out her paints, a hobby she had put aside during her mother’s two-year illness. She painted an image of a young girl reading. “The entire process of unearthing my art supplies, sitting down to create and finally coming up with this sweet little drawing seemed, at the time, like a monumental expression of hope, of trying to move beyond heavy sadness,” Cram says. A version of that drawing has since