Homemade Halloween Costumes On the Rise This Year

Online crafting community Craftster.org surpasses one million readers per month with handmade Halloween costumes leading the way

WALTHAM, MA, Oct. 14, 2009

Craftster.org, an online community for crafting enthusiasts, has just surpassed one million readers (unique visitors) per month. The recent spike in Craftster's readership is an increase of 28% over the prior month's number of monthly readers and a 105% increase over what the website experienced this time last year. Leading the way in popularity on the website this month is searches for handmade Halloween costume ideas. Craftster founder, Leah Kramer, believes that the downturn in the economy has spurred many people to embrace the idea of making things themselves when possible instead of buying new and this is just one example of this mode of thinking.

The most popular costume ideas being searched for on Craftster this year are: movie-themed costumes such as "Where The Wild Things Are," Poison Ivy from "Batman," and characters from Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas"; characters from Nintendo's Super Mario video games; and children's TV show characters such as Wow Wow Wubbzy and Patti Mayonnaise.

According to Kramer the fact that crafting in general has gained so much momentum is only due in part to a desire to save money, and more importantly is a testament to the power of the internet as a whole and its ability to allow people from all over the world to congregate around niche interests. The term "Craftster" means "crafty hipster." Craftster was started in 2003 by computer programmer and crafting enthusiast Leah Kramer of Boston, MA.  Kramer sensed the need for an online community for people who love to make things, but who want to express their own unique interests and personality through their crafts rather than traditional stereotypical crafts. 75% of Craftster's readership is between the ages of 18 - 34. Many of the crafts shared by members on Craftster make use of traditional crafting techniques, but evoke themes that are popular with this demographic such as cutting-edge fashion, pop music, video games, and popular movies and TV shows.

The rise in popularity of Craftster's brand of crafting in particular has become so often talked about that a name has been coined for it -- "indie crafting." "Indie" in this case being short for "independent." The term "indie" is commonly applied to "indie music" and "indie film" to indicate that the creators are working outside of the mainstream channels and therefore tend to produce more fresh, unique, cutting edge results.

About Craftster:
Craftster.org is an online community for crafting and DIY (do it yourself) enthusiasts which has a uniquely hip and cutting edge vibe. Craftster readers share their projects, talk about the latest crafting trends and products and interact with others that have a passion for crafting. More information is available at Craftster.org.

Craftster is a subsidiary of NameMedia, the owner and publisher of many of the largest and most active enthusiast community sites on the web, including sites focused on photography, gardening, crafting, stamping, astrology, automotive, rock climbing and sky-diving. Headquartered outside Boston in Waltham, Massachusetts, more information is available at NameMedia.com.