Sunspots: Etsy: A viewpoint plus ten talented designer makers

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Etsy- I think you've probably heard of it by now.

The e-commerce website, created by Rob Kalin, Jared Campbell, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik and focused on handmade goods, vintage items and supplies, now has over thirty million users and celebrated its ninth year of existence last month.

It has become a loved service for artists, designers, dressmakers, crafters and vintage enthusiasts, being an accessible way to get their creations out to the world, displayed in their own shopfront.

Full time Etsy sellers are promoted widely on the website, but as most sellers are working independently with the relatively high cost of supplies and using a commerce site with so many sellers, even a profitable side business can be difficult (although possible) to achieve.

Etsy has had it's controversies, struggling with a clear definition of "handmade", or to be more honest, distorting the meaning to questionable proportions. From October 2013 it now allows drop shipping and lets factories be involved in a seller's process, all still under the "handmade" description.

Being a website that contains hundreds of thousands of mini operations and hundreds of thousands of people behind them, Etsy and it's sellers have held the weight of all sorts of stereotypes, from knitted vagina salesmen, extremely optimistic pricing, pretentious dropouts, owltrepeneurs (you can have that one for free) and the more traditional craft stereotype of grandmothers making homely knitted hats and christmas cards.

One thing that's apparent to me: Etsy enables people to create and sell what they love in a very well designed format. If you're a full time employed person looking for something to do with your life that makes you feel yourself again, if you're unemployed and looking for something useful and fun to do with your time that might help you make a bit of cash and get attention drawn to a skill you have, if you're a stay at home parent that wants a creative project, or a working artist looking for another platform... you might find that Etsy's what you need.

Being a seller myself who loves all the handmade aspects of the website, I've created a list of ten fantastic designer makers. Creators of unique vegan leather bags, felt brooches, contemporary tyre jewellery, arty metal jewellery, headwear and more...

1. Lannarfelt