Book picks similar to
Vintage Details: A Fashion Sourcebook by Jeffrey Mayer
fashion
sewing
non-fiction
style
celebraTORI: Unleashing Your Inner Party Planner to Entertain Friends and Family
Tori Spelling - 2011
Tori Spelling planned her very first party (her own roller skate–themed birthday with a hot-pink- and-turquoise color scheme) at the age of eight, and she’s been hosting friends and family in her home ever since. She knows as well as anyone that “style” and “elegance” don’t often play well with “budget.” Well, with celebraTORI, she rolls up her sleeves and turns that notion on its head—expertly showing how creativity, passion, and smart planning are the secret ingredients for throwing a truly unforgettable bash on any “real world” budget. All it takes is a little elbow grease and a lot of imagination to transport your guests to another world as soon as they walk through the door. In this delightfully entertaining, must-have party companion, Tori shares all the tips and tricks she’s learned from her most successful soirees (and a few train wrecks). It’s like having your own personal party planner for a fraction of the cost!celebraTORI is not just instructional, it’s inspirational. Hosting an event is not about ticking to-dos off a list; it’s about turning an organic idea into a fun day you and your guests won’t forget—so much so that you just can’t wait to do it again . . . with a different theme, of course. Tori covers all the basics, from discovering new reasons to celebrate and choosing a concept, to decorating, creating flower arrangements, making refreshments, and building the corner-stone of any great party: the dessert table! The best part is that all of her suggestions, including her mouthwatering recipes, are 100 percent do-it-yourself. Filled with lots and lots of great advice, handy blueprints, and hilarious anecdotes, celebraTORI will be the most important guest at your next party. It’s the perfect foundation for taking life’s special occasions up a notch . . . or five. *** They say the devil’s in the details, but for me the details are heaven. Maybe an avid planner and host like me should say that in the course of the party I’m on a cloud of joy, but that would be a lie. Planning and preparing are my favorite parts of the process. Truth be told, when it comes to the actual parties, I’m a nervous wreck. But there is a moment of joy. Mine comes when I see the party come together. The guests are flowing through the space, tasting food, trying out any activities, having conversations with friends and strangers. And when I see someone take a bite of dessert, or try out a photo booth costume, or smile as they pick up a favor, well, that makes it all worth it. Creating a party. It’s my favorite thing to do, and I’m inviting you, as my guest, to join me in the festivities. I know we’re going to have fun. Come—discover your inner party planner! Love, Tori
The Power of Style: Everything You Need to Know Before You Get Dressed Tomorrow
Bobbie Thomas - 2013
Get your style therapy with The Power of Style: Everything You Need to Know Before You Get Dressed Tomorrow by Today Show style editor Bobbie Thomas.This thoughtful and inspiring guide provides the information you need to feel stylish, smart, sexy, and satisfied—with a look that’s uniquely your own—in order to become your most confident and beautiful self.You're invited to gain self-awareness, clarity, and confidence, and take full advantage of the fashion tips, tools, and lessons that Bobbie Thomas lays out, including how to identify your best colors, how to select the most flattering clothes for your individual shape, how to edit your closet, and how to shop smart—to harness the power of self-expression.The foreword by fashion icon Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, and color illustrations throughout, reinforce Bobbie's mantra of self-expression: "Style is the way you to speak to the world without words."
The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History
Kassia St. Clair - 2018
Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization—from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole). She peoples her story with a motley cast of characters, including Xiling, the ancient Chinese empress credited with inventing silk, to Richard the Lionhearted and Bing Crosby. Offering insights into the economic and social dimensions of clothmaking—and countering the enduring, often demeaning, association of textiles as “merely women’s work”—The Golden Thread offers an alternative guide to our past, present, and future.
Alexander McQueen: The Life and the Legacy
Judith Watt - 2012
An intimate and revealing look at the personal and professional life of the fashion world's most visionary designer.
Free-Motion Meandering: A Beginners Guide to Machine Quilting
Angela Walters - 2017
Practice 8 meandering stitches for beginners, plus creative variations on each, with step-by-step visuals and quilted samples. Start your free-motion journey on the right foot with proven techniques to help you disguise mistakes and transition between designs with ease.
The Handmade Entrepreneur-How to Sell on Etsy, or Anywhere Else: Easy Steps for Building a Real Business Around Your Crafts
Dani Marie - 2015
What if you could start your day out with an excited shout instead of a frustrated sigh? Unfortunately, selling handmade goods online is no longer as simple as throwing together a product listing and waiting for sales to roll in. There are now millions of people with handmade products and they are all eager to build a sustainable income. The Handmade Entrepreneur uses precise methods based on proven marketing techniques to set you above the competition. It teaches you how to create a genuine business you can count on rather than a bundle of shop pages and social media accounts built on a foundation of guesswork. What You Can Expect to Learn from This Book: • How to take DIY pictures that get clicks and sales • How to set up a shop that turns visitors into buyers in under two seconds • How to price your items • How to write titles and descriptions • How to brand your business with DIY techniques • How to rank your pages • How to find targeted audiences • How to build up your list of followers • Where to promote your listings • How to sell without selling • How to form relationships with people who can send you extra sales • How to start a "buzz" about your products • Which tools to incorporate into your business The goal of this book is to free you from having to rely on any third-party website for your sales. Yes, you can take advantage of platforms like Etsy, and you should, but websites come and go, and if all your sales come only from that website, you run into trouble every time there are algorithm changes, a saturation of sellers, or cheaper products to compete with. You are trying to generate sales, which means that you are trying to run a business, which in-turn means that you need a real business plan. Brick and motor stores don't just buy a bunch of goods, throw them in a building, and hope people will come. They plan, study their target market, pick a perfect store location, and prepare to market themselves. Just because you sell online does not mean that you can skip all of these steps. You have billions of products to compete with online and a crowd of shoppers who have an overwhelming number of options before them. You must prepare your storefront, get your products ready, know your audience, and then know how to market to them. Optimizing Your Shop for Sales Dani starts out showing you how to prepare your products with photos that attract clicks and sales. It doesn't just tell you how to do it, though. It SHOWS you. Thanks to the help of many carefully selected Etsy sellers, there are many example photos for each point. In addition to this, the author only shows you DIY photos to prove that you can do it all on your own. Next, Dani discusses how to optimize your shop. She goes through every aspect such as banners, profiles, descriptions, tags, and titles. You will learn how to optimize your pages so that people stay there instead of leaving instantly. This can be done by creating an inviting environment with images and content that buyers can skim through in under two seconds. If buyers can determine that your page is worth staying on in less than two seconds, you have won the battle. Finding Targeted Audiences and Marketing The issue with selling online is finding people who would be interested in your products.
Pattern
Orla Kiely - 2010
Her very first collection of signature handbags turned the fashion world on its head, displaying a new sense of freshness and optimism. Now, nearly 20 years later, the graphic patterns and expressive colors of her apparel, handbags and home furnishings are instantly recognizable - and universally coveted. In Pattern, Orla Kiely traces the pattern of her own development as a designer, providing useful information and inspiring insights that can help all of us develop a creative eye for color, shape, form - and pattern. Gain a glimpse of a typical fashion year, including the timing, production and presentation of seasonal collections. Come to understand the power of color, how it triggers emotional and intellectual responses, and how to temper those responses by combining and contrasting tones. And who better than Kiely to advise us on the use of pattern in our lives, be it in the clothes we wear, the accessories we carry, or the furnishing we surround ourselves with in our homes, from wallpaper to rugs, lampshades to linens? Vibrant illustrations and gorgeous photography make Pattern a visual treasure and a thoughtful guide to using pattern with confidence and joy.
Make It Fizz: A Guide to Making Bathtub Treats
Holly Port - 2014
Chock full of easy to understand instructions and full color pictures for the 24 recipes included, you are sure to succeed with this book, regardless of your skill level. With a few simple ingredients, and a little bit of time, you’ll be making bath bombs in an afternoon. You’re in good hands with this quick and easy guide to showing you not only the basics, but also more fun and challenging recipes like the Fizzy Pops, designed to look like tasty cake pop treats. Taking it a step further she has also included cupcake bath bombs with a sugar scrub topping. Who wouldn't love to make these? This book can be a project for yourself, a gift for a friend, or an enhancement to your knowledge in the world of bath and body crafts. Whatever the purpose, the reader will enjoy!
Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790
Linda Baumgarten - 1999
Colonial Williamsburg owns one of the most outstanding collections of period costumes in the world, numbering almost 900 costumes and more than 2,400 accessories.There are 25 full-page patterns in inches and centimeters for women's and men's clothing and accessories accompanied by photographs.
Creating Life-Like Animals in Polymer Clay
Katherine Dewey - 2000
With the friendly medium of polymer clay and the step-by-step instructions in this book, you can achieve the same magical results! Inside, Katherine leads you through then utterly charming projects, such as a sweet little bluebird, a basset hound and a white-tailed fawn. And that's just the start! The "Making Changes" chapter will help you create your own original animal creations by changing poses, making realistic bases, and even modeling your animals to look like bronze, fade and other materials.
The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish
Linda Przybyszewski - 2014
We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress, historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true.In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women -- the so-called Dress Doctors -- taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles -- harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis -- modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society. A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors, The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty -- rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.
Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend
Kathryn Livingston - 2012
What began decades ago as a snob uniform in Palm Beach became a general fashion craze and, later, an American classic. In contrast to the high visibility of her brand, Lilly Pulitzer has largely kept her tumultuous personal story to herself. Bursting forth into glossy fame from a protected low-key world of great wealth and high society, through heartbreaks, treacheries, scandals, and losses, her life, told in detail here for the first time, is every bit as colorful and exciting as her designs.Offers a close-up of Palm Beach society, replete with tropical mischief, reckless indulgences and blatant infidelities as well as fascinating stories about the Pulitzer and Phipps families and their world of eccentrics, high achievers, intermarriages, and glamorous trendsettersTakes a fresh look at the Roxanne Pulitzer scandal and the atmosphere that fed it, and other episodes involving Lilly Pulitzer's family and social circleTraces the many ups-and-downs in Lilly Pulitzer's personal life as well as her business, which suffered a decline in the 1980s before its resurgent transformation into the thriving success it is todayIncludes 25 black-and-white photographs that bring Lilly Pulitzer's world to lifeLilly of Paradise is must reading not only for fans of Lilly Pulitzer and her Lilly brand, but for anyone interested in a journey through the world of privilege and the life of a true American original.
Luella’s Guide to English Style
Luella Bartley - 2010
Then there are the icons – the English girl knows that Kate Moss and The Duchess of Devonshire both have a place in the style pantheon.Luella explains the style tribes vying for the English girl's allegiance, the social rituals she undergoes – from surfing in Cornwall to clubbing in Berlin – and the status symbols she marks herself out with. All this requires a lot of photographs, drawings, and, occasionally, diagrams.But Luella's Guide to English Style isn't simply a book about fashion and style, it's a work of social anthropology – delivered with a wink and a kiss on the cheek. Luella describes the English girl's approach to love and shows how the English girl gets better with age.With her background as London’s hippest designer and as an editor on Vogue and the London Evening Standard, Luella Bartley is brilliantly placed to map out English style and what it means for girls.
Design*Sponge at Home
Grace Bonney - 2011
They don't have to be matchy-matchy or rigidly modern. They can just be comfy and unique and reflect who you are, no matter how small your budget or space.That reader is one of the 75,000 unique daily visitors to Design*Sponge, who make it the most popular design site on the web. The site receives 250,000 pageviews every day and has 150,000 RSS subscribers and 280,000 followers on Twitter. Design*Sponge fans have been yearning for the ultimate design manual from their guru, Grace, and she has finally delivered with this definitive guide, which includes:Home tours of 70 real-life interiors featuring artists and designersFifty DIY projects, with detailed instructions for personalizing your spaceStep-by-step tutorials on everything from stripping and painting furniture to hanging wallpaper and doing your own upholsteryFifty Before & After makeovers submitted by readers of Design*Sponge real people with limited time and realistic budgetsEssential tips on modern flower arranging, with 20 arrangementsWith over 700 color photos and illustrations and projects that are customizable, relatable, and affordable, this is the democratizing design book everyone has been waiting for and all for only $35.00!
The Costume Making Guide: Creating Armor and Props for Cosplay
Svetlana Quindt - 2016
You can do it no matter what your experience level with this, the first full step-by-step technique book on cosplay--with no sewing! Internationally known cosplayer Kamui Cosplay (a.k.a. Svetlana Quindt) shows you how to easily create elaborate costumes and successful props out of items available at your local arts and craft or hardware stores: turn foam into a realistic axe, create a breastplate from scratch and use a glue gun to modify just about anything. You will even learn the best and most accessible techniques for working with specialty cosplay materials such as Worbla! Packed with more than 30 step-by-step demonstrations that teach the skills you need to bring all your favorite characters to life no matter the genre, Kamui Cosplay deconstructs the work that goes into making a complete costume, from the first thought to the final photo. Tutorials cover design planning, fabricating body armor, 3D painting techniques and more. Best of all, you can adapt every lesson to use in all future fandom projects spanning video games, books, anime, movies and even your own original characters! Includes: How to choose a costume and find good reference art A short shopping list of necessary materials and tools for beginning cosplayers Basic safety tips A beautiful photo gallery featuring inspiring images from other cosplayers Next steps--how to grow your workshop, take professional photos, participate in contests and join the cosplay community