Craftster

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Craftster is an online community for crafting and do it yourself enthusiasts that has a uniquely contemporary aesthestic. Users post pictures of craft projects they have made and others comment and ask questions about how it was made.

Craftster's tagline is "No tea cozies without irony" which refers to the fact that many of the projects posted are irreverent, off-beat, humorous, clever, etc. While projects posted on Craftster tend to be made using traditional techniques such as knitting, crochet and sewing they often convey modern sentiments such as images of one's favorite rock band or motifs from one's favorite 1980's video game.

Craftster has over 100,000 registered members. It has been written up in numerous publications such as TIME Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, and the Guardian. While the membership is over 100,000 the readership is over 500,000 unique visitors per month and over 10,000,000 page views per month.

The term Craftster comes from two places. One is that it is in homage to sites like Friendster and Napster except the idea is to share uniquely hip craft projects rather than sharing friends or sharing music. It also is meant to be a clever term for someone who is a hipster but who is obsessed with making things by hand.

Craftster is regarded by many to be one of the forces behind the renaissance of crafting amongst a new, young, contemporary demographic.

[edit] History

Craftster was started in August, 2003 by crafter and computer programmer Leah Kramer. Craftster membership quickly grew entirely by word of mouth. It currently has over 100,000 members and is growing by a few thousand members every month.

Prior to starting Craftster, Kramer was one of the organizers of the Boston Bazaar Bizarre which is a yearly "punk rock craft fair." The Bazaar Bizarre began in 2001 and is known as one of the first and most well known "indie" craft fairs.

After starting Craftster, in 2004 Kramer and four friends founded a brick and mortar store in Somerville, MA called Magpie. Magpie sells handmade goods and local art by over 400 crafters and artists.