I know from experience. In the summer of 2016, I decided to learn hand lettering to create coloring pages for my book, Broken Crayons Still Color. I watched every video I could find and tried all the recommended techniques. However, no matter what I did, even with the best of pens, my lettering looked horrible. Let's admit it: Learning calligraphy is not as easy as some of the artists online make it look. And I was frustrated. I continued my research and discovered faux calligraphy. I decided to use it, along with block lettering, to create my hand-drawn coloring pages. What is Faux Calligraphy? It's fake calligraphy. In my opinion, it is the easiest way to get started. You can achieve a beautiful outcome almost right away, even with your own handwriting. In this book, Calligraphy for Beginners, I will walk you through the steps of how to get started as well as the mistakes to avoid. In calligraphy, your letters will have thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes. With faux calligraphy, you simply add the thickness to your downstrokes after you write the letters. It's a three-step process you'll learn in chapter three. Traditional calligraphy and brush lettering require months of consistent practice to train your hand and develop the muscle memory required to achieve the thick and thin strokes. Even after years of practice, I continue to improve every day. And, honestly, I notice the difference in my lettering if I don't practice consistently for several weeks. Therefore, if you want to achieve a beautiful outcome right away or need to use lettering for a project immediately (like I did), faux calligraphy is a great way to get started. It's a fun way to add text to coloring pages and create beautiful artwork, hand-lettered cards, bookmarks, and so much more. Bonus: As a bonus to this book, you get free access to my faux calligraphy online class ($39 value). To make it as easy as possible for you, I filmed a video demonstrating every letter in the alphabet. Plus, you can download my practice sheets to print off for reference and blank practice sheets for your own lettering. Click the buy button and let's get started!

    Inspired by the recent resurgence of fairy-tale and fantasy characters, these projects draw from classic stories as well as pop-culture phenomena featuring romantic, feminine costumes. Projects range from kid- and teen-friendly animals hats to an Alice in Wonderland beret to a crystal-embellished vest fit for a Snow Queen, adding a little dress-up fun to knitters' everyday wardrobes.

    A wonderfully evocative memoir about what we wear - that goes far more than skin deep

    The ultimate practical guide to sewing fabulous bags from expert Lisa Lam Detailed photographs illustrate every technique in this unique book, from choosing fabric to inserting fastenings.Expert tips, trade secrets and inspirational advice result in professional and beautiful results.A capsule wardrobe of eight exclusive designs features easy-to-follow instructions and full-size patterns.Whether you're getting started, improving your technique, or want to design your own, this is the book you'll grab for every bag you make.

    With overviews of each key period and detailed illustrations for each new style, How to Read a Dress is an authoritative visual guide to women's fashion across five centuries. Each entry includes annotated colour images of historical garments, outlines important features and highlights how styles have changed (whether in shape, fabric choice, trimming, undergarments) from those shown previously. Readers will learn how garments were constructed and where their inspiration stemmed from at key points in history, as well as the differences between dress types for various occasions, variations in detailing, cut, and popularity, and the class, age and social status of the wearer.This beautifully illustrated guide equips students, researchers, curators and anyone interested in historical fashion with the tools to 'read' a dress. Using this book, readers are able to identify specific period styles, and will really know their cartridge pleats from their Récamier ruffles. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/how-to-r...

    Hoopla rebels against the quaint and familiar embroidery motifs of flowers and swashes, and focuses instead on innovative stitch artists who specialize in unusual, guerrilla-style patterns such as a mythical jackalope and needlepoint nipple doilies; it demonstrates that modern embroidery artists are as sharp as the needles with which they work.Hoopla includes twenty-eight innovative embroidery patterns and profiles of contemporary embroidery artists, including Jenny Hart, author of Sublime Stitching; Rosa Martyn of the UK-based Craftivism Collective; Ray Materson, an ex-con who learned to stitch in prison; Sherry Lynn Wood of the Tattooed Baby Doll Project, which collaborated with female tattoo artists across the United States; Penny Nickels and Johnny Murder, the self-proclaimed Bonnie and Clyde of embroidery; and Alexandra Walters, a military wife who replicates military portraits and weapons in her stitching.Full-color throughout and bursting with history, technique, and sass, Hoopla will teach readers how to stitch a ransom note pillow, mean and dainty knuckle-tattoo church gloves; and create their own innovative embroidery projects. If you like anarchistic DIY craft and the idea of deviating from the rules, Hoopla will inspire you to wield a needle with flair!With a foreword by Betsy Greer.

    on pilgrimage, shrines, beautiful writing.

    Sartore’s photographs delight and inspire, from the first moments a newborn enters the house to Halloween parades, from visits with family and friends to fireworks on the Fourth of July. Easy-to-follow tips and instructions make the creative process simple, helping parents approach photography in a whole new way. Digital photographers will appreciate tips on editing techniques, album innovations, archiving methods, and printing. Sartore’s charisma and humor make learning a pure delight. Unlike competitive titles, Photographing Your Family is lavishly illustrated to show the many ways to make pictures, how Sartore captured these images specifically, and the philosophies a world-class photographer brings to his work at home—with emphasis on the contributions that relatives, friends, and pets can make to the story that is family. Early childhood is a fleeting time that parents and grandparents go to great lengths to capture in photos. This book will appeal to a vast audience: families who want to create memorable albums, parents with new babies, and everyone who wants to give a truly unique and useful family gift.

    Even better, this is not about how to use costly, artsy paper, but how to turn stuff around the house—magazines and shopping bags, candy wrappers and paint sample cards, wrapping paper, old maps, and paper towel tubes—into stunning jewelry, gifts, home decor, party favors, and much more. Chances are you’ve seen the author’s cutting-edge work in the windows of Anthropologie, where she is the chain’s merchandising manager. An inveterate crafter who creates projects and styles photo shoots for magazines like Parents and Vogue Knitting, Kayte Terry takes the most versatile of materials and the most basic of crafts (remember snipping valentines out of construction paper?), and creates something completely trans- formative. Turn a sheaf of any white or graph paper into an amazing Scrap Happy Globe Lantern for the dining room. Fashion colored tissue paper into Songbird Votives, leftover raffle tickets into a Prizewinning Bowl, that out-dated pile of holiday catalogs into a picture frame. There’s a necklace made of playing cards, a gum wrapper bracelet, and barrettes made by quilling—a paper technique that goes back to the Renaissance. Every project is photographed in full color, and includes step-by-step illustrations and instructions. Truly a book that shows how to think outside the (cardboard) box.

    Love them or hate them, they cannot be ignored by anyone who professes to be a fan of the great game of baseball.With Damn Yankees, Rob Fleder, former Executive Editor for Sports Illustrated magazine, offers a timeless collection of original essays by some of the most prominent contemporary writers in America—from Pete Dexter to Jane Leavy, from Roy Blount Jr. to Colum McCann—each piece focusing on one uniquely colorful subject: the fanatically adored/resoundingly despised “Bronx Bombers.”Funny, moving, provocative, insightful appreciations and detractions—from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Derek Jeter—Damn Yankees offers twenty-four fascinating takes on the most storied franchise of baseball’s Major Leagues.

    The pleasures to be had from slowing down can be many, with connections to sustainability, simplicity, reflection, and tuning into traditional and other multicultural textile traditions.Slow Stitch is a much-needed guide to adopting a less-is-more approach, valuing quality over quantity, and bringing a meaningful and thoughtful approach to textile practice.Claire Wellesley-Smith introduces a range of ways in which you can slow your textile work down, including:Using simple techniques inspired by traditional practice (including hand-stitch rhythms)Reusing and re-inventing materials (reuse even old textile projects)Limiting your equipmentMending revisited (practical and decorative techniques)Project ideas and resources that help towards making a more sustainable textile practiceRichly illustrated throughout, and showcasing work from the best textile artists who work in this way, this is a truly inspirational book for those looking to reconnect with their craft and to find a new way of working.

    Times to BookSense) with 215,000 copies in print. So influential is the book that the number of Stitch 'n Bitch knitting groups tripled in the past six months--spawning a Stitch 'n Bitch Nation.Written by Stitch 'n Bitch author Debbie Stoller, Stitch 'n Bitch Nation features 50 hip, new, even funkier and more fabulous patterns by Stitch 'n Bitch designers, who come from San Francisco to Brooklyn, Chicago to Cambridge to St. Paul, Minnesota. The Om Yoga Mat Bag. Felted Monster Slippers. The London Calling Union Jack Sweater, because even punks get cold in winter. A Double-Duty Shrug. Polka Dot Tankini. That '70s Poncho. The Boob Tube. Spiderweb Capelet, Cabled Newsboy Cap, Chunky Baby Booties and Baby Bunny Hat. And the most ingenious project, a Knit-Your-Own Rock Star doll--with a choice of Joey Ramone or Henry Rollins. All designs are complete with full-color photographs and step-by-step instructions, and are made from sexy, contemporary yarns, including multicolored angora, alpaca, lace, and mohair. Includes the best tips, shortcuts, and techniques from Stitch 'n Bitchers, profiles of knitters and their groups, and a how-to refresher on all the stitches used in the book.

    Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture.In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

    

    Even if you're unfamiliar with the term "steampunk," chances are you've already discovered it through the works of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Tim Burton, Mary Shelley, or Lemony Snicket. Steampunk is an artistic movement that includes stories involving steam-powered versions of modern technology in a fictionalized Victorian setting.Staying true to steampunk style, Skeate and Tedman's inventive Steampunk Softies feature prominent science fiction and fantasy elements, as well as anachronistic inventions and props. In addition, many have dual roles that add practicality to their punk existence—the Lady makes an excellent paperweight, while the Illusionist's cloak doubles as a screen cleaner. Despite their meticulous detailing, Steampunk Softies are simple enough for even a sewing novice to construct. A short biography accompanies each softie, providing a background story for each character. Also included are a complete list of supplies, illustrated step-by-step blueprints, and a handy, back-of-the-book reference section that provides tips on aging and distressing project materials.Venture full steam ahead into your next crafting project with Steampunk Softies.