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Issue Date: December 5, 2004
Low-tech crafts
Millions of Americans are starting from scratch to make their own gifts.
By Judi Ketteler
This holiday season, scores of do-it-yourselfers will pick up their glue guns, knitting needles or paintbrushes and turn out something handmade for loved ones.
Why buy bangles when you can make them? New books and TV shows are evidence of the boom in crafts.
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The booming craft market ($29 billion in 2002) encompasses everything from traditional domestic arts such as flower arranging, sewing and candle-making to creating jewelry or home décor using beads, paper, wood and metal. Each year about 4 million new crafters join the fold, says Don Meyer of the Craft & Hobby Association, which estimates that nearly eight out of 10 will make their own gifts or decorations this holiday season. In fact, gift-giving is the biggest reason people craft, with more than 40% of crafters involved in creating holiday decorations.
Other popular crafts include making soap and other personalized home goods. The retail craft industry has spawned a slew of home-centered TV programs and do-it-yourself books and products.
In a ready-made, ready-bought culture, why the growing interest in making something from scratch that requires skill, patience and, most precious of all, time? Because it carries greater meaning, industry watchers say. "The emphasis in America on the accumulation of material goods has given way to an emphasis on accumulation of experiences," Meyers says, and crafting fits the "do-it-yourself" movement.
"Making jewelry has always been a great source of comfort for me," says Jackie Guerra, 34, the host of "Jewelry Making" on cable's DIY Network. "My mother's generation was crafty because they had to be. For the post-feminist generation, it's a choice."
When crafter Jean Railla, 34, started perusing books devoted to traditional homemaking skills, she found most titles dated back to the 1950s: "There was no hip home-ec how-to, nothing that addressed the fact that a woman can be a feminist and have a love for the domestic arts."
So Railla began her own Web site (getcrafty .com), which offers lots of advice (topics: Knit a Bikini, 10 Reasons to Thrift), and wrote "Get Crafty: Hip Home Ec" (Broadway, $15), which focuses on projects for 20-something crafters.
Today's interest in crafts is largely about creative expression, says Melissa Sykes, vice president of programming and production for HGTV. The network launched a new show this fall, "Crafters Coast to Coast," to raise crafting's profile. As for its many young female fans, "a whole new generation doesn't see it as being in conflict with what they want," Sykes says.
But men are embracing crafts, too: Yoshi Aoki, 37, from Seaside, Ore., featured on "Crafters Coast to Coast," employs traditional Japanese designs in his handmade paper lamps and nightlights.
"There is something really wonderful about making it with your hands," Railla says.
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