Green, clean worktops

Bamboo’s use as an eco-friendly building material is shooting up. Teragren, a US-based manufacturer of bamboo construction products, makes an attractive, sustainable, and functional alternative to traditional hardwoods. Designer Lisa Steers of Tisbury’s Vineyard Home Center especially likes Teragren’s countertops, with their hard, smooth surfaces and subtle patterning. Next thing you know, pandas will be wanting to come to lunch.

MV on Etsy

“Etsy is the world’s handmade marketplace,” the website proclaims. It’s where crafters can post creations of all kinds to sell, and that includes a number of crafters who live on our fair isle. Go to the Etsy search engine and type in “Martha’s Vineyard” to see the pages of items that represent the Island; there’s also a Martha’s Vineyard team to which many locals belong.

Melissa Swansey Nicholson is a stay-at-home mom in Oak Bluffs who makes vintage-inspired printed designs on cotton that she sells by various lengths or on pillows under the business name Oliver Henry Organics (the combined middle names of her two sons).

Sixteen-year-old high school student Sara Thompson was an apprentice at A.E. Kirkpatrick Jewelry Design in Vineyard Haven starting at age eleven, and now through Sara’s own Let It Be Jewelry Design on Etsy, she sells necklaces, bracelets, and rings (pictured at left) made from colorful enamels, copper, and silver.

Have you made something you’d like to offer for sale? Etsy makes it easy to bring your own Island creations directly to the wider public.