Well, kinda... when crafting, you can substitute missing materials with tickets - but essences are prohibitively expensive at 20 tickets for a single essence. It really is better to wait for the quarry to offer essence, and talk to your villagers a lot as they will randomly gift you essence, too.
I think maybe your best option for essence is to wait for the quarry to offer what you are looking for (if it's shiny you receive more I believe?) and try to talk to the villagers that offer it as frequently as possible.