Handmade ice cream cone ornaments are seen on display Tuesday at Renegade Handmade, a craft consignment shop in Chicago. Shop owner Sue Daly says that despite a nationwide decline in retail sales, her business is holding steady. Many people are turning to the handmade and craft movement as a way to save money with the downturn in the economy.

Chicago ? Since high school, Arielle Napier has occasionally made items like a bed-sized quilt or belts as Christmas presents for friends.

This year, staring down a bleaker-than-ever economy, the 27-year-old is forgoing store-bought gifts entirely and giving friends and family everything from her own photography to handmade hats.

In doing so, Napier’s joining a small-but-growing chorus of consumers who are pledging to make 2008 a wholly handmade holiday. While the movement to buy and receive handmade gifts already was growing, it is getting an extra boost from the economic downturn that turned into a full-fledged meltdown this fall.

“Everybody gets so wrapped up in what big sparkly things they want or they’re getting,” Napier said. “I know it helps the economy, but how much impersonal crap do we need in our lives?”

DIY resurgence

The handmade and craft movement, encouraged by an online coalition of do-it-yourselfers, is half a concerted effort to save money and half a desire to shun the in-your-face consumerism that some people see as having led to a nation that got used to living beyond its means. Whatever the reason, observers say it’s gaining steam.

Thousands of people have added their names to a holiday petition online, promising to give only items they’ve made themselves or handmade items that they’ve purchased, while asking friends and family to do the same. Notes one pledger: “When the economy is sour, let handmade rise to power.” Another calls buying and giving handmade items the “original economic stimulus program.”

Joan Holleran, director of research at consumer research firm Mintel, said the handmade movement is an extension of people’s desire to simplify and seek control over their lives – the combination of which has caused them to rethink gift-giving in recent years.

But with the economy in tailspin, Holleran said she expected even more personalized and handmade gifts to find themselves in stockings and under Christmas trees.

“The economy is really hitting home and forcing people to think ‘how can I keep this gift-gifting still really meaningful on a tighter budget?'” she said. “And personalizing it and giving that gift of time and our craft really is so much appreciated.”

Anti-consumerism

At Renegade Handmade, a craft consignment shop in Chicago’s trendy Wicker Park neighborhood, store owner Sue Daly said business is holding steady this year, despite a nationwide decline in retail sales. And she’s planning for bigger-than-ever crowds at an annual Christmas craft fair being held next month, while increasing the vendor space by a third to sell everything from kitschy collages to knitted scarves and felted wool toys.

“It’s really on everybody’s mind – this blatant consumerism and this hole we’ve been digging for ourselves by spending and buying,” said Craft Magazine Editor-in-Chief Tina Barseghian. “And there has been this resurgence in craft as response to that kind of icky feeling, where after you go shopping you feel kind of gross. Making things is a kind of antidote.”