Book picks similar to
Guide to Gemstone Settings: Styles and Techniques by Anastasia Young
art
design
gemstone
jewellery
Chained: Create Gorgeous Chain Mail Jewelry One Ring at a Time
Rebeca Mojica - 2010
No other book shows how to use so many weaves in so many ways, or gives this ancient art such a beautiful and modern twist. Techniques once used for armor now have a new life and can be used to create elegant adornments.Open Chained and find:- Clear, detailed step-by-step photos that will take you from opening and closing jump rings to finishing your first (or fiftieth!) project - Easy-to-navigate Weave in a Nutshell options for many weaves that will show advanced chain mail weavers the weave of a project in just a few steps - 22 beautiful projects plus dozens of variations, including earrings, bracelets, necklaces and pendants, each with its own skill level and time investment rating - Endless options: choose your favorite colors, your favorite metals, customize the size of your project, and find inspiration to add your own unique stamp to any piece of chain mail jewelryGather your pliers and piles of jump rings and weave your way to beautiful jewelry with Chained.
Decorative Fusion Knots: A Step-by-Step Illustrated Guide to Unique and Unusual Ornamental Knots
J.D. Lenzen - 2011
D. Lenzen shows how to tie knots like no others. Just as origami figurines are created through the merging of different folding techniques, he creates new knots by combining historical knot elements and new knotting techniques. The product of this intermingling is what he calls a fusion knot — a brand new genre of knot in a centuries-old tradition. It is rare for a knot book to feature even one brand new, never-before-seen knot, but Decorative Fusion Knots features more than 20 brand-new knots created by the author. Decorative Fusion Knots is the culmination of ten years of study, practice, and creation. The knots within were inspired by history, nature, mythology, and more. Many of these incredible knots have never been presented or described publicly, until now. Never before has a knot book presented a step-by-step format to tying brand new knots like this in full-color. Alongside fusion knots, this book presents logical and comprehensive instructions for a plethora of historical knots, including Celtic knots, Chinese decorative knots, maritime knots, and popular paracord ties. Each historical knot instruction is presented in step-by-step fashion. Each of the 300 step-by-step color photographs is accompanied with clear, concise instructional captions. Whether you’re a sailor, teacher, jewelry maker, survivalist, general knot enthusiast, or just looking for bush crafts, paracord ties, a curriculum for students, or a fun way to pass the time, Decorative Fusion Knots is the book for you. With easy-to-understand captions and clear step-by-step photos, readers can learn at their own pace, review whole techniques at a single glance and simply lay the book flat on the table and follow along as they tie.
Modern Glamour: The Art of Unexpected Style
Kelly Wearstler - 2004
With a painter's eye for colour, unwavering esteem for the historic, and a finely tuned sense of detail, Kelly Wearstler, one of Hollywood's most talked about young interior designers, has led her Los Angeles-based interior design firm, kwid (Kelly Wearstler Interior Design), to national prominence with an array of noted residential and commercial projects. Now, she shares her famous design philosophies and secrets, and inspires readers to create unexpected style in their own homes. Through full-colour photographs and sketches and informative text, Kelly explains the elements of unexpected style: inspiration, shapes and forms, graphics, texture and colour, masculine vs. feminine, and unusual details. Kelly takes readers through the creative process and shows how a Franco-Chinese piece of vintage wallpaper led her to a shopping spree in Paris and inspired the layered, classic look of the hotel Maison 140 in Beverly Hills. She explains the need for "icebreakers" in a room and how unexpected designs and details can lighten a room's load. This is the perfect book for anyone looking for new and creative ways to decorate their homes. Whether it's shopping for a bedside table, putting reflective paint on the underside of a dining room table, or finishing a ceiling with high–gloss paint, she inspires readers to add an element of the unexpected to their homes. Others will enjoy living vicariously through Kelly's shopping sprees throughout the US, Asia, and Europe and appreciate discovering how each item found is a starting off point for a fresh and fun room design.
Maeda@Media
John Maeda - 2000
Being ambidextrous with Eastern and Western cultures, he can see things most of us overlook. The result is a humor and expression that brings out the best in computers and art."--Nicholas Negroponte John Maeda is one of the world's leading experimental graphic designers and is quickly becoming a digital culture icon. His early preoccupation with the intersection of computer programming and digital art has resulted in a fascinating, interactive, and stunningly beautiful collection of work. Maeda has pioneered many of the key expressive elements that are prevalent on the web today. Among his most well-known works are "The Reactive Square," which features a simple black square on a computer screen that changes shape if one yells at it, and "Time Paint," in which paint flies across the screen. He has created innovative, interactive calendars, digital services, and advertisements for companies such as Sony, Shiseido, and Absolut Vodka. This is the first publication to present a complete overview of Maeda's work and philosophy. A glorious visual exploration of ideas and graphic form, "Maeda @ Media" takes you through Maeda's beginnings in early computerized printouts, to his reactive graphics on CD-ROM, to his dynamic experiments on the web, to his pedagogical approach to digital visual art, and finally to his overarching quest to understand the very nature of the relationship between technology and creativity. Six thematic chapters provide an overview of his entire career and research. But this is not just a catalog of older work: interspersedbetween each chapter is a new visual essay that has been created exclusively for this publication to underline each of the major themes. Coming together in a massive 480 pages, printed in a dazzling array of color combinations on three different kinds of paper, the result is a manifesto, a finely crafted manual and inspiration sourcebook all in one. With over 1000 illustrations.
Words Fail Me
Teresa Monachino - 2006
In this quirky new title designer and typographer Teresa Monachino rounds up and breaks down a variety of unruly words: words lacking in integrity, misleading words that do not mean what they say, words that mean more than they say, words with inconsistent pronunciation or spellings that are just plain cruel! Using striking and witty graphic design the author demands answers to such troublesome questions as, why is abbreviation such a long word, does monosyllabic really need five syllables and why is lisp so hard to say if you have one?
The Eco Chick Guide to Life
Starre Vartan - 2008
Here you'll find hundreds of ideas on how to be ecologically smart and still be stylish and trend-setting. You don't have to sacrifice to go green--you can eat well, dress well, and live well once you learn how to:Learn where to shop for vintage and recycled jewelry (mining practices for gold and silver are notoriously polluting).Wear sustainable threads--organic cotton, peace silk, bamboo--or look for funky reconstructed designs made from vintage fabrics.Find shoes made from naturally tanned and dyed leather, hemp, or made from recycled materials...that still look incredibly chic.Party it up- with the planet in mind! Make your next fiesta fabulous with organic beverages, seasonal food from the farmer's market, and more.Pretty-up with organic, biodegradable hair products, body washes, moisturizers, and make-up--better for you and the planet's water supplies! We'll explain why and what to look for.How to earn points while convincing your boss to go green in your office.Travel green and still see the world in style!Save cash with some Earth-loving swaps around your apartment, dorm or house....and more. Let these and other easy-to-follow, fun and fashionable tips help you to feel great while doing good. You and Mother Nature will look fabulous!This book is printed on recycled paper.
Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces
Bruce Willen - 2009
These fundamentals of design, once the exclusive domain of professional typographers, have become an essential starting point for anyone looking for a fresh way to communicate. Practical information about creating letters and type often amounts to a series of guidelines for executing a particular process, font program, or style. But what makes lettering and type endlessly fascinating is the flexibility to interpret and sometimes even break these rules. Lettering & Type is a smart-but- not-dense guide to creating and bending letters to one's will. More than just another pretty survey, it is a powerful how-to book full of relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, and exercises. While other type design books get hung up on the technical and technological issues of type design and lettering, Lettering & Type features the context and creativity that shape letters and make them interesting. Authors and designers Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals examine classic design examples as well as exciting contemporary lettering of all stripes—from editorial illustrations to concert posters to radical conceptual alphabets. Lettering & Type is ideal for anyone looking to move beyond existing typography and fonts to create, explore, and use original or customized letterforms. This latest addition to our best-selling Design Briefs seriesfeatures a foreword by Ellen Lupton and hundreds of images and examples of work by historical and contemporary designers, artists, and illustrators, including Marian Bantjes, Stefan Sagmeister, Matthew Carter, Christoph Niemann, Steve Powers (ESPO), House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Margaret Kilgallen, James Victore, Abbott Miller, Sibylle Hagmann, Ed Fella, and many more. Throughout the book interviews with type designers, artists, and graphic designers provide real-world perspective from contemporary practitioners.
Drawing and Designing with Confidence: A Step-By-Step Guide
Mike W. Lin - 1993
His method emphasizes speed, confidence, and relaxation, while incorporating many time-saving tricks of the trade.
Mies Van Der Rohe: 1886-1969
Claire Zimmerman - 2006
The creator of the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945?1951) and the Seagram Building in New York (1954?1958), Mies was one of the founders of a new architectural style. Well known for his motto ?less is more, ? he sought a kind of refined purity in architectural expression that was not seen in the reduced vocabulary of other Bauhaus members. His goal was not simply building for those of modest income (Existenzminimum) but building economically in terms of sustainability, both in a technical and aesthetical way; the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass were the foundation of this approach. Though the extreme reduction of form and material in his work garnered some criticism, over the years many have tried?mostly unsuccessfully?to copy his original and elegant style. This book explores more than 20 of his projects between 1906 and 1967, from his early work around Berlin to his most important American buildings. Basic Architecture features: ? Each title contains approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans ? Introductory essays explore the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects ? The body presents the most important works in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes, construction problems (why some projects were never executed), and resolutions ? The appendix includes a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations ofthe architect's most famous buildings
Cannibals
Guy N. Smith - 1976
This is the dark secret of a remote Highland village - a secret kept safe until a local fisherman builds some holiday chalets to attract tourists. Then the shameful conspiracy of silence is shattered at last - as the horrendous creatures shamble from their lair to mutilate and kill the unsuspecting visitors.