Heartful Handmade Blog

crafty penmanship

David and Leah Gessner give new life to distressed and discarded Vermont lumber remnants by transforming them into useful everyday items—high quality pens and pencils. I visited their website, Handmade Maple Pens, and instantly fell in love with their colorful thick barreled Artist's Sketch Pencils. With their 5.6 mm 4B leads and $75 price tag, these objects of beauty are also practical and reasonably priced drawing tools. They come in natural or black Vermont Tiger Maple, but I find the brightly stained (red, blue, green, orange, purple) finishes artistically inspiring. These are happy pencils.

carry it all big and small

Heather makes bags:  Dice bags, tote bags, and messenger style shoulder bags. I had never seen a dice bag before I visited Heather's Etsy store, Marsbarn Designs.  But the game mastering blog Gnome Stew says Heather makes the Ultimate Dice Bag because she thinks of little features that add up to high quality—things like sealing the closure ties

so they don't fray, making the bags a durable (and reversable) two layers, and giving them a square bottom so they can't flop over.  That attention to detail is evident in all her products.  And all of them are lovely. 

lamps your way

G. Scratchard has been making pottery for over 50 years, and he set up shop in Vermont in 1960.  Somewhere along the way, he settled on the specialty of lamps. And now, with two helpers. makes about 2000 a year, most of them made to order.  It's nice to be able to order things the way you want them.  

Scratchard offers several contemporary styles, sizes, and glazes that you can mix and match to your preferencess.  You can also add on an optional dimmer, and a white or clear silver cord (brown is standard).  His lamps come with one of two basic lamp shade styles.  There's no shipping charge within in the United States, and he offers multiple lamp discounts.   Prices range from $99.00 - $500.00.

stir it up by hand

Jonathan Simons makes handcrafted cherry wood spoons.  His spoons are not made to hang on the wall as purely decorative objects, although they would look great there.  These are real roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-cookin' spoons that were designed with the hand of the cook and the spoon's specific purpose in mind.  Jonathan says if you treat his spoons right, they'll last a lifetime, and he prefers that you wash them by hand and rub them occasionally with coconut oil. 

soul warming fire bowls

John T. Unger is an artist who has worked as a print and web designer, illustrator, industrial designer, musician, teacher, actor, and set designer. And he's also a poet. 

John T. works primarily in recycled materials and his creative mandate is "sustainable design with an edge."  I came upon his artwork by way of Typepad Hacks, his how-to blog for Typepad users. 

The page I wandered into caught my eye because of his, well . . . eye catching, recycled steel fire bowls.  The large (37" diameter, 22" high) and graceful Big Bowl O Zen works for me.  It's large enough to make building a fire worthwhile and its simple elegance will never get old.  His more ornate bowls, though, are also artfully timeless, and all are lovely enough to add to the fire gazing experience.  There are several designs and sizes for sale with prices ranging from $100-$949, and he also does custom orders:

John T Unger Studio/Fire Bowls

a handmade global market

Etsy calls itself an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade, but that does not even begin to tell the story.  This is a worldwide community of people building businesses based on creating handmade products and selling them in online shops.  It's a movement, a living vision of people gaining more control over their lives and doing what they love. 

helping village economies

Ten Thousand Villages is a nonprofit fair trade organization that markets handcrafted products made by artisans all over the world. They sell these products through their 150 retail stores in the United States and Canada, their online store, and through festivals.  This organization has been doing good works for over 60 years (they were founded in 1946), and is a founding member of the International Fair Trade Assocation.  In June of this year, they were named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Forbes Magazine and The Ethisphere Institute (press release).  TTV offers a wide selection of quality handmade products:  Jewelry, furniture, musical instruments, toys, baskets, scarves, purses, and much, much more. And they have an impressive collection of hand tied oriental rugs made in village homes, usually by families, using locally farmed wool, traditional methods and natural dyes.

about this handmade blog

Practically everything is made in factories and shipped by the thousands to stores everywhere.  And we're bombarded with advertising to get us into those stores to shop.  It's an endless cycle as new styles, colors, or whatever are invented to get us to replace the stuff we have.  And we usually do, sooner than we like, because most of today's products are not manufactured to last (or are manufactured to not last).  All the while, there are artists, artisans, and craftspeople among us making really cool things that are not caught up in the in-style/out-of-style revolving door because they are unique and timeless, as well as useful and high-quality (meaning they're made to serve their purpose well and to last).  The problem is these products can get lost in the mix.