Giving Twitter and Facebook a Rest
Unlikely entrepreneur sews cozy social media pillows
etsy.com
Rest easy knowing that Facebook isn't too far away.
Stay connected to Facebook and Twitter while you sleep.
Thanks to Justin Thomas of Morton Grove, Ill., catching zzzz's on your favorite social networking web site is no longer a dream.
The 24-year-old hand-crafts pillows with Internet themes and social media logos and then sells the cute and admittedly nerdy pillows on Craftsquatch, an online shop at etsy.com.
"I was struggling to find a paycheck in Chicago, which is difficult when people with degrees are vying for the same office jobs. So to pass the time, I became a social media junkie," Thomas told the Chicago Tribune.
Thomas makes all the pillows himself in his "studio (*cough*bedroom*cough*)." The whole process takes between one and two weeks, depending on demand. Each costs $15.99 to $17.99.
And even though Thomas makes pillows that only a small niche of Internet users would recognize (RSS, FriendFeed, Reddit), he is always willing to make a custom order with the icon or logo of your choice.
So what's the most popular design? That would be the infamous Twitter "Fail Whale," an image displayed on the website when Twitter experiences an outage. But it's also the most difficult pillow to make.
And of course, along with the main etsy page, Craftsquatch can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
Matt Bartosik, a "between blogs" blogger, is a social networking butterfly.
Copyright NBC Owned Television Stations / NBC Chicago
Posted Monday, Aug 17, 2009 - 9:38 AM CST
