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.
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 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.
A Hobby Lobby newspaper advertisement:
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.
