Crafty Living in a High Speed World

I've always felt a weird sense of both pride and sheer horror at sharing with others what drew me to vintage and handmade fashion. As it turns out, wearing thrift store bought clothing in the 9th grade isn't exactly a recipe for entry to the cool crowd -- at least, it wasn't in 1999 and that wasn't all that long ago.

Growing up in a small southern town meant (for many of us) that money was scarce but sewing machines and creativity weren't. Most students took home ec and understood the basics of both baking a pie and hemming a pair of pants. Welcome to the country! My dad, an industrial sewing machine salesman, also influenced my thought process on how things are made and where they come from. While the rest of the nation was wrapped in Abercrombie & Fitch, the poor kids were getting crafty.

For many, that just meant shopping at local discount stores and outlets (and believe me, you have to be plenty crafty to survive those) but for me it meant scouring the local Goodwill for basic pieces I could match with homemade accessories and embellished shoes. I didn't know it at the time, but I was paving my own way towards a career and life dedicated to crafting and an all-around homegrown existence. I'd work my butt off to get away from my farm-filled hometown, only to spend the next ten years in NYC dreaming of a simpler time and place.

Like most kids, I spent plenty of time on AOL chatting with friends. But I also didn't have a computer in my bedroom, like many teenagers, and spent plenty of time styling people at my mall job at Express and having craft get-togethers with friends. When I started college at NYU, I also pushed my vintage clothing business, Southern Dropout, into full gear. I quickly learned that there were things I was pretty good at (upcycling an old handbag) and others that constantly kicked my butt (knitting, I hardly knew ye).

In 2003, I was a film student hoping to graduate into a career in the art department (a great career for craftiness). But life had other plans, as it often does, and I somehow become a writer/editor for magazines and, then, mostly the websites of magazines. How someone who used a typewriter to churn out college essays and barely knew the difference between a Mac and PC became entrenched in the web world is still beyond me. Granted, I wasn't writing code here, but I did later become a web producer and that's no small feat for someone as tech-challenged as me.

Lately, I've been able to converge my work experience with my first love of handmade and vintage goods into a career that combines both. While web and technology might not seemingly go hand-in-hand with the crafting world, it happens everyday in my life. Between my day job at Etsy and my personal website CraftFoxes, I'm able to share my love of crafting and handmade living over the Internet with a collective family of people who love the same.

People often ask me how a crafty person survives in such a tech-driven world. For me, there's a simple answer: step away from the iPhone/Pad/MacBook. I spend at least an hour a day creating something, whether it's dinner, a handwritten letter to my best friend or sewing new buttons on a favorite blouse. I do this because it relaxes me and makes me feel worthwhile. It's a feeling I can't get from drowning an hour on Facebook or USWeekly.com (not that I don't enjoy those things in, cough, heavy moderation).

A lot of it comes from a simple way of doing things -- when I want a new necklace; H&M is never my first stop. Since I come from a small community, I want to give back to other small communities and businesses. I make what I can, buy from friends and locals when I can't. When I need a new desk, I have it made or pick one up off the street because I move a lot and I don't need a lot of worthless crap from Target that's just going to get thrown out. Do you know where trash goes? Me either. Isn't that scary?

All of those small things add up to a crafty/DIY lifestyle. It's a slow burning trend now, and one that I hope continues to catch fire.