A national movement encouraging people to eschew big-box stores in favor of handmade goods is allowing some Utah Valley residents to stay home with their children while working, vent their creative urges and make money from their hobbies.

Cynthia Winward of Provo makes decorative pillows from silk, linen and cotton and sells them to the tune of $2,000 a month.

"I think I got 75 orders this month," she said. "At first I thought, 'Oh, I would be happy if I made $500 a month.' It has turned into thousands a month."

This is all thanks to Etsy.com, an online marketplace that has emerged as the eBay of what is being called the handmade movement. Etsy was started in 2005 by Rob Kalin, a frustrated painter and furniture maker who could not find a viable online market for his wares. Today the site boasts 1.8 million members with more than 200,000 sellers. Sales have gone from $166,000 in 2005 to $87 million in 2008.

Some of this success is flowing directly to Utah Valley. Etsy has more than 300 sellers hailing from Provo alone.

"Unfortunately, sometimes business is too good," Winward said when asked about a curious posting on her corner of the Etsy site, www.meringuedesigns.etsy.com. The posting, which has now been changed, recently said that she is not, in capital letters, accepting custom orders until she can catch up.

"I am a one-man band. Things just get busier and busier," she said.

Being able to earn an income and still stay home with her children "is a very important element of this," she said. "I make my own hours. I am basically in charge of my own business, and the money is good as well."

Winward started out by doing custom drapes for a Provo-based designer, but after she started selling pillows on Etsy, she became so busy that she no longer works with local designers. She could definitely grow the business, but "it gets less about the art and more of having a regular job."

She has had offers from stores in several countries wanting to carry her products, but has turned all those offers down.

"I can't do that volume right now, unless I want to start a sweatshop," she said, noting that she already spends five to six hours a day sewing.

Etsy takes 3.5 percent of each sale she makes on their site, she said.

"I think the handmade movement is a really great thing," she said. "You get what you want, and there is kind of a face behind what you are getting."

Bonny Smith is in the first year of her master's program at Brigham Young University. She sells crocheted items on Etsy at www.bonnyfrances.etsy.com, taking in about $500 a month.

The handmade movement is not only about paying people to make goods instead of machines, but about quality and uniqueness, instead of the quantity and repetition that you find at a big-box store, she said.

"Honestly, you'll never find anything like it anywhere else," she said. "There is a place in life for handmade things."

Smith said she stumbled across Etsy trying to find a place to sell hand-bound books. When that failed, she started selling her crochet work.

"It was really slow at first, I'll be honest," she said.

Both Winward and Smith said they have learned that the key to making sales is to have great photos on the Etsy Web site.

"I plan on taking it as far as it will go," Smith said of her new business. "I do plan to do more with my life than get arthritis when I'm 40, but right now it is a great source of extra income. It is neat to have people actually buy things you make and like them, and have their children wear them. It is fulfilling. It is something of value."

Heidi Van Natter of Provo and her sister Emily Stephenson sell educational games of their own design, such as board games for teaching compound words, at www.secondstorywindow.etsy.com

"My sister and I both teach, and we were making these for our classrooms and we thought if our students are getting use out of them maybe others would as well," Van Natter said.

Now they have a steady business, making at least one sale a day.

"I would rather give my money to the person who is creating something rather than to some big corporation, or sending it off for mass production," Van Natter said. "Knowing who made it adds more character to whatever you buy."

Buying handmade items comes with a multitude of benefits, said Adam Brown of Etsy in an e-mail interview.

"One is that you have a direct link with the creator of an object," he said. "Therefore, that object has a story to tell, and there is a meaningful relationship that exists within it. Another is that handmade goods are often more durable than mass-produced, because the person actually cares about what they are making, paying greater attention to detail and craftsmanship."

Handmade goods may even be more affordable than some of their mass-produced counterparts, and those crafting the items can make custom orders to the client's specifications, an option that many customers value.

It took almost three years for Etsy to reach 1 million members, but in the eight months since that has happened, "we have added almost 1 million more," he said. "I think a lot of this can be attributed to the network effect. Etsy's strongest growth has always been through person-to-person contact, online or off. I think that the handmade movement in general has grown because, with the availability of information, people realize that it is possible to make so many things yourself, that mass production is no longer the only viable option."