'Visual Chronicles' provides a no-fear guide to expressing one's deepest self with art & words.

    The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers is Cetti’s comprehensive how-to manual showcasing her until-now secret techniques for creating 27 popular blooms, including peonies, poppies, roses, and hibiscus. Clear instructions and stunning step-by-step photographs show crafters of all levels how to make individual flowers as well as how to combine blooms to form 20 exquisite garlands, centerpieces, wreaths, corsages, and boutonnieres.

    Author Jane Davenport is a beloved artist and international workshop instructor known by her thousands of students and fans for her over-the-top, enthusiastic, happy, and encouraging style. In Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces, Davenport guides you, step by step, through the foundations of drawing a face, developing successful features, creating skin tones, playing with bright colors, shading, highlighting, and much more as you learn to create amazing mixed-media portraits.With this elegantly designed guidebook, you will quickly master a variety of techniques in a variety ofmediums, including:PencilMarkerPenWatercolorAcrylic paintInkPastelEphemeraDrawing and Painting Beautiful Faces will have you dancing your way through the exercises. In no time at all, you will have a selection of beautifully faced portraits ready to view, display, or even sell to a fashion designer.

    This book is for all these people—it's an engaging and intimate glimpse into the personal pages of a wide variety of select artists and journal keepers whose works not only provide visual delight and inspiration but evidence the intensity and devotion that such personal journals invite.

    Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.Praise for Wonderbook: “Jammed with storytelling wisdom.” —Fast Company’s Co.Create blog“This is the kind of book you leave sitting out for all to see . . . and the kind of book you will find yourself picking up again and again.” —Kirkus Reviews online“If you’re looking for a handy guide to not just crafting imaginative fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but to writing in general, be sure to pick up a copy of Steampunk Bible author Jeff Vandermeer’s lovingly compiled Wonderbook."  —Flavorwire“Jeff Vandermeer and Jeremy Zerfoss have created a kaleidoscopically rich and beautiful book about fiction writing.”  —Star Tribune“Because it is so layered and filled with text, tips, and links to online extras, this book can be read again and again by both those who want to learn the craft of writing and those interested in the process of others.” —Library Journal

    Divided into sections that include Outdoorsy (ideas to enhance your backyard), Dishing It Out (decorating plates using different techniques), You've Been Framed (innovative picture framing ideas), and Can I Have a Light? (creating and decorating lamps, lanterns, and chandeliers), it's as entertaining to read as it is endlessly inspiring. With more than one hundred and fifty inventive and fun projects, The Big-Ass Book of Crafts is the perfect activity book for readers of every mood, budget, and skill level.

    Even if you're starting out in a scary basement or in the tiny bathroom in your cramped apartment with a $40 budget, Print Liberation will show you everything you need to know to get started. And if you're already in a rented studio with a few bucks to spend, this book can help you turn screen printing into your personal art or business.Seriously, this is a completely comprehensive how-to guide. You'll start by learning the history of the craft accompanied by graphic illustrations. Then, step-by-step photographs walk you through the ins and outs of all the main screen-printing techniques, including printing on dimensional surfaces, such as walls and goats (although the latter is not recommended). You'll even find advice about how to turn screen printing into a money-making venture, either by selling your work through galleries or by offering your services locally to make posters, T-shirts and anything else people might need.You can do it. Your imagination is your only limitation.

    From quick “try it” ideas using shapes and patterns to doodled portraits and contour drawings, these step-by-step projects are wild creative fun. The featured artists include Cori Dantini, who provides a “Recipe for a Face”; Flora Chang with innovative watercolor designs; and Teesha Moore who offers ideas for adding personality to doodled characters.

    Author and mixed-media artist Pam Carriker proves that art and life can coexist peacefully, productively, and happily. Making things every day can be a joyful reality instead of just wishful thinking.Each chapter in Art at the Speed of Life includes both essays and project ideas from a variety of contributors, including Suzi Blu, Lisa Bebi, Christy Hydeck, Paulette Insall, Cate Calacous Prato. The projects are inspiring, yet easy to complete on a tight schedule, and include techniques such as assemblage, image transfer, and collage. A bonus seven-day journal project helps you track your work as you go. With a unique combination of time management tips and advice, inspiring essays, and projects designed to fit into busy schedules, Art at the Speed of Life will help you live your dream of making art every day.

    Step-by-step instructions illustrate every technique.

    In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice--"it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind." This edition includes a new preface and an interview with the author.

    This inspirational guide with DIY attitude has everything you need to know about the world’s great T-shirt: how to cut it, sew it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, and best of all, transform it. • Features more than 100 projects (plus 200 variations) for customized tees, tank tops, tube tops, T-skirts—even handbags, a patchwork blanket, iPod cozies, leg warmers, and more. • Not a DIY expert? Not to worry. More than one third of the projects are no sew, meaning anyone who can wield a pair of scissors can put a personal stamp on her wardrobe. But the sewing basics are here too: backstitch and whipstitch, gather and ruche, appliqué and drawstrings. • And the mission statement for Generation T: Ask not what your T-shirt can do for you; ask what you can do for your T-shirt. And then Do-It-Yourself!

    Known as a “modern” quilter, she actually draws much of her creative vision from quilts of the past. In Denyse Schmidt: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration, Schmidt pays homage to the quilters and quilts that came before her. Each of the 20 traditional quilt designs she has reinterpreted here (among them are Irish Chain, Mariner’s Compass, and Orange Peel, to name a few) is introduced with a lively overview of the pattern’s history. Instructions are illustrated, templates are provided at full size on a pullout pattern sheet, and a complete techniques section is included at the back of the book.Praise for Denyse Schmidt: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration:"Denyse Schmidt's contemporary art quilts are things of enduring style and beauty, but few fans realize her 16-year career as a textile artist began when Schmidt fell in love with tried-and-true, centuries-old traditional quilt patterns . . . Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration is the artist’s return to this fertile terrain, featuring her colorful and updated take on 20 time-tested designs. Full-page photos of gorgeous quilts full of those bold geometric shapes that first inspired her provide ample motivation, while detailed instructions, a pull-out book of templates, and a section detailing tools and techniques offer plenty of how-to support, even for novice makers." —American Craft Magazine"The book contains 20 traditional quilt styles that look exceptionally modern, hip, and fresh, with limited color palettes and minimal use of prints. To me, it is the best of both worlds—tried-and-true patterns with stories to tell, interpreted by this talented woman who helped define modern quilting. The modern/traditional debate is moot here, which is refreshing and wonderful." —Sew Mama Sew!“It's been 7 years since Denyse Schmidt's first book, and believe me, this new volume was well worth the wait...Whether you consider yourself a traditional or modern quilter, there is plenty of inspiration here, in projects that play with the tantalizing pairing of vintage patterns and contemporary colors. Although Denyse explains the origins and alternate names of many of the patterns, she rarely offers them straight: she riffs off old patterns like Mariner's Compass and Wagon Wheel and strips them down to stark basics." --Meg Cox, Journalist, Author, and President of the Alliance for American Quilts"Denyse Schmidt never ceases to inspire us . . . We are very excited to announce her latest book, the simply breathtaking Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. Delving back to the traditional styles that first sparked her passion for quilting, Denyse gives these twenty quilt patterns a modern spin with bold, beautiful fabric choices." —The Purl Bee "In this book, [Denyse] shows off a new gamut of wonderful quilts . . . She writes in such a quiet and contemplative way, reminding me that quilting at its best isn't meant to be done in a hurry to crank something out." —Spoonflower.com

    A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page - a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so - and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved - or reviled - literary figures.In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature - he thinks of himself first, and foremost, as a reader - into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading.

    For these projects, Lisa Occhipinti rescues and repurposes orphaned and outdated books from flea markets and library sales and turns them into new art objects and practical items for the home. Her creations range from artfully constructed mobiles, wreaths, and vases, to functional items like shelves, storage boxes, and even a Kindle "keeper" for those who want to replicate the sensation of holding a "real" book while reading from an e-reader. Projects utilize every imaginable part of a book--from hardback cover to individual pages--and are a DIY celebration of a new way to view a book's potential.