Craftser
Type of site
Craft content / online community
FoundedMay 2000 (2000-05)
Headquarters
El Segundo, California
,
U.S.
URLhttp://www.craftster.org/
AdvertisingYes
Current statusclosed
Website closed on December 19, 2019

Craftster was an online community for crafting and do it yourself (DIY) enthusiasts.[1] Users posted pictures of craft projects, and others commented and asked questions about how it was made.[2]

The Craftster.org website closed on December 19, 2019.

The site's tagline, "No tea cozies without irony", referred to the fact that many of the projects posted are irreverent, off-beat, humorous, clever, etc. While projects posted on the site tended to be made using traditional techniques such as knitting, crochet, cross stitch and sewing they often conveyed modern sentiments such as images of a favorite rock band, or motifs from a favorite 1980s video game.[3]

The site had over 190,000 registered members.[4] It has been written up in publications such as Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.[5] [6] [7] The membership was over 190,000, and readership was over 1,000,000 unique visitors per month and over 10,000,000-page views per month.[8]

The site has been called be one of the forces behind the renaissance of crafting among a new, young, contemporary demographic.[9]


On closure of the site, the members were left temporarily without a forum for sharing all of the crafty goodness, knowledge and familiarity that had grown within Craftster. The community rose from the ashes and forged a new home where many, old and new, continue with the same ethos. To enable sharing, teaching, inspiring others in various craft, DIY, food and other random, awesome, often non-mainstream versions of mainstream crafts. Lettucecraft takes up the baton that began with Craftster and thanks the original for enabling such a large community to grow and thrive.

History

The site was started on June 27, 2003,[10] by crafter and computer programmer Leah Kramer.[11][12][13] The term "Craftster" is a portmanteau of "crafty hipster" and a nod to pioneering peer-to-peer sites Napster and Friendster.[14] Prior to starting the site, Kramer was one of the organizers of the Boston Bazaar Bizarre, a yearly "punk rock craft fair", begun in 2001.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "Designer combines the nerdy with the crafty". NBC News.
  2. ↑ "Pretty Crafty". Time. March 1, 2005. Archived from the original on March 4, 2005.
  3. ↑ "It's Sew Easy To Make & Mend". The Daily Record.
  4. ↑ "Get crafty for holiday gifts". Associated Press.
  5. ↑ "Feeling Crafty? Inspiration Abounds on These 5 Sites". The Washington Post. February 5, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Crafster Founder Interview". The New York Times Magazine. July 2, 2006.
  7. ↑ "Sewing Hip". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. January 9, 2008.
  8. ↑ "Statistics Center". Craftster.org. Retrieved October 14, 2016.
  9. ↑ "'Alternative' crafters bring new eye to crafts". Associated Press.
  10. ↑ "Craftster.org WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved July 5, 2016.
  11. ↑ "Interview with Craftser Founder". sfist. Archived from the original on January 22, 2010.
  12. ↑ "Calling all craftsters". The Boston Globe. July 26, 2006.
  13. ↑ "She and Kitsch Go Way Back". The Boston Globe. June 22, 2006.
  14. ↑ "About Craftster". Retrieved October 14, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Crafting gets attitude". The Boston Globe(December 7, 2005). Retrieved October 14, 2016.
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