Featured Maker: Diane Chester

This week’s featured maker is ‘doodle artistDiane Chester from Hey Yeti.

Hey Yeti, which is best known for BIG cards, illustrations and prints which are all illustrated and designed by Diane Chester, a native of Salford. She is so passionate about the environment and her products are all sustainably sourced and recyclable. After spending many years working in an office in Manchester as an insurance underwriter, a few years back Diane made a giant leap from the corporate world to being self-employed to pursue her passion of drawing, painting and making things. The biggest hurdle was self-belief.

“I am passionate about what I do,’ she says, ‘but working by myself and having confidence in the decisions I make, marketing and all the ‘are my products good enough’ moments were a huge learning curve for me with plenty of ‘I’ve got this’ chanting and endless Pinterest quotes pinned to my mood board!”

Diane Chester

Her designs have evolved for sure … getting to know what appeals to her customers and not being afraid of trying new designs or being upset or too hard on herself when things don’t go so right. Diane likes the idea of her customers being pleased with their purchase and the recipients of her cards feeling that have received something unique and special that can’t be purchased off the shelf in a supermarket …. or more special to receive then a Facebook post. After all a social media post can’t be displayed or kept in a box of treasured memories.

You can see more of Diane’s work or order one of her bespoke designs from her Etsy shop Hey Yeti

Featured Makers: Helen Gazard

Here at Etsy Manchester, we want to celebrate the creativity, passion and individuality of our makers and encourage the public to recognise and support genuine, local makers and their diverse businesses.

In Part 2 of our new series of featured makers, we’re focusing on Helen Gazard from Sparrow Road Handmade.

Sparrow Road Handmade

Helen runs Sparrow Road Handmade from her home in Salford, and makes a range of reusable eco-friendly products. Her interest in reusable products began just after her first son was born. Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of waste generated by one baby, she decided to give cloth nappies a go and fell in love with reusable products. With an existing passion for sewing and a varied fabric stash she decided to set up her shop selling reusable baby wipes, and now sells a range including nursing pads, cutlery pouches, kitchen towels and more! The aim of Sparrow Road is to make it easy and fun to all do our bit to look after our planet.

Check out Helen’s Etsy shop
www.sparrowroadhandmade.etsy.com


Featured Maker: Milla Tolonen

Here at Etsy Manchester, we want to celebrate the creativity, passion and individuality of our makers and encourage the public to recognise and support genuine, local makers and their diverse businesses.

Our first featured maker in this series is Milla Tolonen and her business Milla-Time.

Milla-Time

In her own words, she describes Milla-Time as, “Milla-Time is a collection of handmade, colourful and quirky home and fashion accessories with a retro twist. Basically all things that I like and I hope that others will too. I’m heavily inspired by vintage, 80s being my favourite era, and my Nordic roots

If you love colourful and fun then check out Milla’s shop www.etsy.com/shop/MillaTimeX

or follow her on Facebook @Milla-time and on Instagram @Milla-Time

#etsymcr #whybuyboring #etsymcrmakers #supportlocal


added by Kat Pearson 5th July 2021