We all may enjoy good buys at Target, but when friends visit, the decor they notice first is the handmade one-of-a-kind items that can’t be found at the mall.
The United States is experiencing a craft renaissance, and Europe is not far behind. Nearly 60 percent of U.S. households include people cropping, gluing, knitting, painting, sewing and stenciling their way to a more individual style, according to the Craft and Hobby Association. And experts say this do-it-yourself resurgence is largely a reaction to mass production. “It started bubbling up in the late 1990s,” said Carla Sinclair, editor of Craft, a national magazine that applies traditional hobby skills to nontraditional projects.
“The Internet has been one of the forces behind the craft renaissance,” she said, “and I think people are sick and tired of chain stores and the [lack] of variety out there.”
Green living is another major boost to the trend. “Our whole country and world is in such a green consciousness,” said Sinclair, one of the people behind the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas. “It’s fun to do things like take old shopping bags and knit them into a fun rug.”
While offbeat hobbies pursued by hip, indie-minded creative types seem to dominate today’s crafting culture, no one can deny the $2.4 billion gorilla in the room: scrapbooking.
“It’s fun, and it’s social,” Sinclair says of the scrapbook phenomenon.
“Flipping through a stack of pictures is not the thing now,” notes Jennifer Perkins, co-host of “Craft Lab” on the DIY Network. “People want their scrapbooks to be an expression of who they are.”
Denver painting instructor Terrie Lombardi witnessed the seductive power of scrapbooking in her own family.
“I have a daughter who’s 23 and just had her first baby,” said Lombardi, who says her loves teaching painting to hobbyists who make up the third-largest segment of today’s craft culture. “The old photo album is old school.” America’s next top-selling craft is making and refinishing products for the home.
Total crafting sales last year were $30.2 billion, with households spending an average of $476 on their hobbies.