Etsy For Yourself

This post is for those of you who haven't yet discovered the magic of Etsy.com (I'm guessing there's a lot of overlap with the pool of those of you who haven't yet discovered the magic of Twitter, but that's a topic for another day)- you poor deprived souls (I say, as if I didn't just discover both things recently myself)! Etsy is like a huge online craft fair of lovely handmade and/or hand-curated items, and I could spend all day wandering among it's virtual booths. It is alternately inspiring, jealous-rage-provoking (that I was not granted that capacity for pure artsy-craftiness), and too, too tempting. Nowhere else can you find such a wealth of one-of-a-kind beautifully-made things at very reasonable prices. The pics above are from four Etsy shops that I love, but they represent only a tiny fragment of what's out there- like four of the stars in the sky, or four pearls at the bottom of the ocean. So dive in!

Above: Crazy-cute vintage flower headband ($22), from Be Something New. I might buy it before you get there, though- I want to wear it to all seven of the weddings we're attending this summer. But all the headbands at this little gem of a store are to die for, so there's more where this came from.

Pretty milk-glass cake stand ($85) from Eddie Ross (if I didn't already have a marriage-threatening collection of 15 cake stands I would have snatched that sucker up already, too). Eddie Ross offers pretty antiques that he has collected himself from all over the world. I like absolutely everything in his shop.

Adorable scalloped cupcake liners ($4.75 for 75) from Bake It Pretty. They have all kinds of cute cake decorating items for sale. To me, they fall right into that sweet spot of totally impractical but absolutely necessary.

Handcut Kiragami paper ornaments ($18) from Emerlye Arts Kiragami. I'm not kidding- each one of those things was carefully cut by hand- like those paper snowflakes you made in first grade, only on psychotropic drugs (the snowflakes are are on drugs, not you in first grade). They would make truly incredible decorations for a party, or very pretty art in a girly room.