Arts and Crafts Find New Life Online

(page 2 of 2)

It has a loyal fan in Mirela Popovici. The 28-year-old spends hours on the site downloading patterns, getting advice in the forums from other members, and creating how-to slide shows. A computer programmer by day, the Hollywood (Fla.) resident spends her evenings and weekends whipping up skirts, dresses, and tops. Last January she created a shop on Etsy. Popovici signed up for free to register a Web site on the service under her name at mirela.etsy.com, paying Etsy only listing fees and sales commissions. Now, in addition to lingerie and jewelry, she sells some of the clothing she makes using Burda's patterns. "I love to alter their patterns," Popovici says. "And having the community makes it so easy to figure out how to make different alterations."

Etsy was one of the pioneers of turning sharing into good business. Early in 2007 it created Etsy Labs, a community space at its headquarters in a warehouse near scruffy downtown Brooklyn. About a dozen times a month, Etsy sellers and other craftspeople hold evening classes where they teach others in the Etsy community how to be handy, showing them how to design and sew stuffed animals, build their own musical instruments, and bind books. The company, founded by three twentysomething friends who met as undergrads at New York University, now has 50,000 active sellers and 600,000 registered members.

POWER-TOOL DRAG RACERS

The online DIY movement is hottest among people under 30. Using the Internet is second nature, and they already share almost every aspect of their lives on the Web. It's just a step to sharing that knowledge in the real world. Last year, 45,000 people crowded the San Mateo (Calif.) Fairgrounds, where Make was holding its second annual Maker Faire. It brought together 300 innovative DIYers and featured power-tool drag races (belt sanders and weed whackers on wheels can reach 60mph) and a life-size mechanical giraffe.

Eric Wilhelm's experience reflects the urge to be more hands-on. While earning his PhD in mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the then-23-year-old took up kitesurfing. He didn't have thousands of dollars for equipment, so Wilhelm built his own boards and posted detailed designs on his Web site. Readers asked for more information and help building other projects. So two years ago he launched Instructables.com, where anyone could contribute how-tos and get reader feedback.

Now, Instructables has 7,500 directions for everything from making a pinhole camera to sculpting a chair out of wood. "My grandfather had a bunch of baby-food jars with screws and nails in the basement, and after ignoring the skill it took to use those, people are now seeing that that's valuable," Wilhelm says. "They're afraid of losing touch with how to do stuff. That's why it's hip and cool to knit now."

Green is an associate editor for BusinessWeek .