This post is part of our Artisan Profiles series, promoting authentic artisans and their products. Artisans: get your store featured by joining our free Buy Handmade campaign. Read the others here.
Dragontree.Emporium is a shop run by Elizabeth Drachenström, who creates a variety of crochet and knit items such as scarves and shawls, adorable little stuffed animals, blankets and more. Dragontree.Emporium also sells paintings made by Elizabeth’s brother.
Welcome to the Artisans Co-op, Elizabeth!
ARTISAN PROFILE
Artisan: Elizabeth Drachenström (She/Her)
Shop: Dragontree.Emporium
Socials: @theelizabethjoy, @ dragontree.emporium (Instagram); @elizabethjoyl (twitter)
Artisan Interview
What’s the name of your business, if you use one? What do you create/sell?
DragonTree.Emporium – we want to create an emporium for people to shop at, currently we sell my handmade crochet/knit items and my brother’s paintings.
Do you currently have a shop or website up and running? Where can we find you?
How long have you been creating? What made you want to start your business/start selling your art?
Knitting 20 yrs, crochet 3 yrs, embroidery 5 yrs – been selling off and on for 10 yrs.
What inspired you to start dragontree.emporium? Did you sell your work before deciding to start your shop?
I started selling in college on Etsy as a way to earn some extra money. Word got around to the rest of the students and some of them bought items off me as well. Dragontree.Emporioum came about because I was talking to my partner about wanting to focus more on my crafting and living my dream since he was focusing on creating YouTube videos and doing Twitch streams as a part of his dream.
What inspired the name Dragontree.Emporium? Its very whimsical!
It’s actually based on our married name. We are both nerds and had very little attachment to our “maiden” names so we are working on changing them both.
But our name is Drachenstrom (Drachen meaning Dragon in German and strom meaning tree in Czech) and then the idea is to created a website where other small artists could host their items on without paying an arm and a leg, hence the Emporium.
What does your creative process look like? If you work with a creative partner, how is it to work together, or do you have different roles in the process?
My creative process has been based off of need in the past: need a baby shower gift? Figure out how to crochet a baby blanket and a stuffed animal to match. Need a bridal shower gift? Figure out how to embroider a wall hanging etc.
What part of creation do you enjoy the most? (The process, seeing the finished product, seeing people’s reactions to receiving the art/product, etc.)
The process closely followed by seeing people’s reactions to receiving the product.
What is your Number One piece of advice for fellow artisans (biggest lesson learned)?
Get outside your comfort area every once in a while to stop the stagnation.
What challenges did you find yourself facing when you first started creating, or when you started your shop (or both), and how did you solve them?
The first challenge was just coming up with the ideas and getting them out of my mind and into the fabric. I think that one was just solved with hours of practice.
There have been a lot of challenges with starting my shop, the main one being getting traction and traffic, which I still haven’t solved.
What is your biggest inspiration?
Probably a mixture of victorian/edwardian aesthetic and cozy cottagecore.
What elements of those aesthetics do you find yourself most often incorporating into your works?
I love shawls, wraps, wristlets etc. I like making things that are pretty AND useful.
Is there a specific niche or target audience you are trying to reach with your art?
I want to create more things for the pagan circles, more altar cloths and spell cloths etc.
About Artisans Cooperative
We are growing an online handmade marketplace for an inclusive network of creatives: a co-op alternative to Etsy.
Shop the marketplace!