eBay introduced a calendar of craft ideas in conjunction with the Hobby Industry Association’s National Craft Month campaign. The calendar appears on eBay's Crafts portal page and will contain 31 tips, notions and suggestions, one for each day of National Craft Month. eBay hopes to inspire and encourage the vibrant community of crafters, scrapbookers, quilters and sewing enthusiasts who have welcomed the site as a resource for crafting supplies.

At any given moment, more than 150,000 crafting products are for sale on eBay, and more than 25 percent of these are fixed price sales as opposed to auction. Nearly 5,000 searches are typed into eBay’s search engine every day for terms including sewing machine, fabric, scrapbooking, beads, cross-stitch, and paper piecing.

The eBay Crafts category has experienced rapid growth. Crafts were originally listed in eBay’s “Everything Else” category, then moved to the Hobbies & Crafts category in March 2001. In September 2002, eBay launched the eBay.com/crafts portal page, where the category continues to flourish. Last year, more than four million craft items were sold on the site, according to Jill Finlayson, eBay’s senior category manager, Crafts. “We’ve experienced strong growth in the Crafts category, with a 70 percent increase in 2002,”she said.

http://www.ebay.com/crafts