Leaders in the Craft/ DIY Movement Launch Handmade Consortium and Announce "Handmade Pledge" for 2007 Holiday Season

Leaders in the Craft/ DIY movement launch Handmade Consortium and announce "Handmade Pledge" for 2007 Holiday Season.

PRWEB) November 20, 2007 -- Etsy, Craftster, Indiepublic, Craft Magazine, Interweave Press, Burdatyle, The Austin Craft Mafia, Design Sponge, and The American Craft Council, nine prominent forces in the current DIY resurgence, have banded together to encourage people to buy handmade this holiday season.

Calling themselves the Handmade Consortium, the group has launched www.buyhandmade,org, a website where people take this simple pledge:

"I pledge to buy handmade this holiday season, and request that others do the same for me."

Seeing a need to address the safety, social, and environmental issues associated with global mass production, the Handmade Consortium created the pledge as a call to action for consumers to be conscientious of how they spend their money this holiday season.

"People want to have a special connection to the goods in their lives," says Matthew Stinchcomb, the Handmade Consortium representative from Etsy. "When you give handmade you give something that is one-of-a-kind, and made with care and attention that is absent in mass produced goods. Furthermore, you feel the satisfaction of supporting an artist or crafter directly, not a huge corporation.

To learn more about the project or to take the pledge please visit http://buyhandmade.org .

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