Etsy: "Kentucky Crafts" (online website; searches for "handmade" and "vintage" could be enabled in the past - but in 2024, Etsy changed its classifications to “made by,” “designed by,” “handpicked by,” and “sourced by.”  

•     Etsy, founded in 2005, is likely the largest online site dealing with crafts, and the majority of the offerings there fall into the "popular" level of culture; that is—for the most part—they are not truly "folk"/"traditional," nor are they typically the "artisanal" or "art" products of "elite" formally-apprenticed or classically-trained craftspeople.    

  • Certain entries on Etsy may identify craft practices and products that have unique ties to Kentucky, for instance: the adaptive and artistic re-use of tobacco sticks.  Such entries may lead to many otherwise invisible Kentucky-based craft practitioners, both of traditional/folk and "contemporary/elite" craft products. 

  • Many Kentucky-based craftspersons find Etsy useful for finding specialized tools as well as for marketing and selling their own products; sites like Etsy and Facebook offer potential access to customers without requiring the crafter to establish "brick-and-mortar" stores or dedicated websites.

• The two screen captures below hint at the vastness of "Kentucky Crafts" objects or tools that are sold, bought, and promulgated on Etsy.

Michael's

• The Michaels Companies, Inc. is an American company that is North America's largest provider of arts, crafts, framing, floral & wall décor, and merchandise for makers and do-it-yourself home decorators.  The Michaels Companies, Inc. owns and operates more than 1,250 Michaels flagship stores in addition to its online retail and wholesale operations.

  • The Michael's stores offer canvases, paints, markers, artists' pens and pencils, pad and paper, desks and easels, printmaking supplies, ink and dip pens, paint pouring, and instruction/classes for the production of a variety of popular craft products, often seasonal in theme. 

  • Michael's also hosts a YouTube channel called "Homemade by you" with hundreds of instructional videos, like the two that follow...

Hobby Lobby

• Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., formerly Hobby Lobby Creative Centers, is a private for-profit corporation which (as of 2020) owns a chain of 900 American arts and crafts stores with a volume of over $5 billion in 2018.  For some consumers of popular mass-market crafts materials, the company's reputation was diminished after September 2012, when Hobby Lobby filed a lawsuit against the United States over new regulations requiring health insurance provided by employers to cover emergency contraceptives. 

Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts Stores

• This is an American specialty retailer of crafts and fabrics.  Though based in Ohio, they have retail stores across the United States.  In Kentucky, Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores are in Ashland, Campbellsville, Corbin, Elizabethtown, Florence, Frankfort, Glasgow, Lexington, Louisville, and Owensboro.