I went to university with a girl who people called ‘Cardigan Girl’. She was your pretty standard ‘posh university’ girl – always had to make every seminar about her and her experiences, was forever talking about her skiing holidays and her journalism contacts and how well she’d done on the last essay. But rather than the typical university look of Uggs and a hoodie, she dressed in whatever Topshop was currently offering. Every day. It got to the stage where people didn’t need to go on the website or to the store to see what was currently being sold – you could just look at Cardigan Girl.

I don’t know about fashion. As long as websites and baking and photography and cats and people and computer games and various other things exist, I’m not going to really care about it much either. I buy clothes primarily based on colour (which is a huge thing for me) and texture (I hate clothes that feel cheap), so other than that I’m not too fussy. But I hate wearing stuff and then seeing other people wearing it, which is one of the reasons why I tend to wear clothes I bought years ago, and why I’ve been buying more from Etsy.

One of my friends had a baby about a year ago, and I tried introducing her to Etsy at the time. It took another attempt, more recently, to get her hooked though, and we had a chat about it the other day as she’s currently getting some reusable nappies made up (to all you people who visit in an attempt to avoid the ‘mommy blog’ talk – sorry. This is almost definitely a one off!). Like me, she’s a control freak, and the thing that struck me most was when she said, ‘It’s amazing to be able to commission my own stuff’, because that’s one of the things I like the most as well. We’re both people who know exactly what we like, and we both come across things that are good but aren’t exactly what we want. I’m terrible for this, because I want something to be perfect or I don’t want it at all. On the plus side, I save a lot of money that way ;)

Long story short, I’ve bought a lot of stuff and had a lot of stuff commissioned by Etsy sellers over the past few years. It’s great for unique gifts as well as getting something perfectly tailored to your needs/tastes. A couple of my favourites include my big camera bag and my platypus necklace (I also have a Pinterest board that I add random Etsy things to):

I had this bag specially commissioned so it would fit my DSLR with bespoke pockets for two lenses and an inside flat pocket for filters.

To explain the title of this post, I love buying from individual sellers who make stuff because they enjoy it and they’re good at it. Regardless of where they are in the world, if I can do a little bit to support a family and get something I love out of it at the same time, it’s a win-win situation as far as I’m concerned (especially if they’re fairly local because of airmiles and all that stuff). It means a lot to people, as shown by this note I got from a seller when I bought something recently. I’m bored with the same chain stores everywhere selling the same things. Sure, it’s convenient for things like food, but it’s boring for the interesting things in life. And when places like Etsy make it so easy for people to sell their own amazing stuff and make it cheap for people to commission sellers, then it’s time to go small, and it’s time to go personal.