Shoeboxes and paper bags are fine for other cats. But your favorite felines deserve luxurious living spaces! This DIY construction guide includes fun and easy instructions for making cardboard trains, ships, food trucks, rockets, and other hideouts. Also included are tips for climbing towers and scratching pads that they can use to stay sharp.All twenty projects are quick to assemble and require inexpensive and easy-to-find materials. You can customize them to match your cat's wildest desires!

    When used effectively, line and mark-making convey texture, tone, form, movement, and mood. With Drawn to Stitch by your side, learn creative uses of line in embroidery and textile art.Artist and teacher Gwen Hedley shares a series of exercises designed to explore line’s potential as well as develop your creativity. Drawn to Stitch also covers line and mark-making tools, materials, and processes, including printing and mixed-media techniques. Gwen explores stitch, explaining how to interpret different line qualities from crisp and sharp to soft and diffused and from raised and overlaid to recessed and inlaid.Full of inspiring ideas, Drawn to Stitch is illustrated with stunning examples of stitched-textile work from leading artists.

    Twelve chapters (one for each month) showcase the designs of today's leading modern quilters along with easy-to-follow guidelines, so you can reinvent their work in your own signature style. Best of all, with this book in hand, you'll have everything you need to start your own online quilting bee and enjoy collaborating with other fabric lovers around the world.

    Following an overview of painting fundamentals, illustrated step-by-step instructions accompanied by lessons on specific techniques lead your way. This unique book is a complete course in acrylic painting, built up from key techniques. As you progress through the sections of the book, the author demonstrates each technique with the creation of a mini painting, measuring 5-inches squared. So by the time you have worked right through to the end, you will have an amazing collection of 50 mini paintings—on board, paper, or canvas—that will be a testament to your skill and creativity. The subject matter for these squares varies from abstracts and simple color-mixing exercises, through to figurative subjects: a flower, a sunset, a busy street scene—and many more. These can be mounted, exhibited, or simply collected in a portfolio, or given away as gifts for friends to cherish. If you are coming to acrylics for the first time, or keen to improve your skills and sometimes daunted by the thought of filling a large empty canvas or blank piece of board, this is your ideal guide. Instead, it will free you from creative hang-ups and replace them with an addictive desire to create that next 5-inch square!

    In this book, Sunshine Cobb covers all the foundational skills, with lessons for constructing both simple and complex forms from clay. Ceramic artists will also find a variety of next-level techniques and tips: designing templates and replicating pieces, lidded vessels, using molds, a variety of decorative techniques, and other avenues of exploration are all inside.Artist features and inspirational galleries include work from today's top working artists, such as Bryan Hopkins, Lindsay Oesterritter, Liz Zlot Summerfield, Bandana Pottery, Shoko Teruyama, Courtney Martin, Sam Chung, Deborah Schwartzkopf, and many more.  Take your hand building skills—and your artwork—to the next level with Mastering Hand Building. The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering the Potter's Wheel and Mastering Kilns and Firing.

    Readers will learn how to make odd and endearing one-of-a-kind creatures from a variety of sock styles. Softcover F&W Media Inc

    Begin by choosing a motif from this extensive collection, which ranges from elegant alphabets to 1970s-inspired flowers and leaves, from sweet fairies to vintage-chic ladies in classic Dior dresses. The "Get Stitching" section gives you the basics you need to get started, along with an illustrated how-to of the simple stitches that are used to create all of the motifs. Each of the following sections, which are arranged by color–fresh greens, pretty pinks, timeless blues, rich reds, and elegant white and taupe–presents ideas for embroidering motifs in single colors, showing how much can be achieved with just one color of embroidery floss on a plain background. Includes more than eighty beautifully photographed, inspiring ideas for stitched embellishment, from wearables and personal accessories to a variety of decorative items for every room in your home.

    Packed with wonderfully eclectic examples, this book explores the intriguing creative possibilities of bookmaking as a modern art form, including a wide range of bindings, materials, and embellishments. Featured techniques include everything from Coptic to concertina binding, as well as experimental page treatments such as sumi-e ink marbling and wheat paste. In addition to page after page of inspiration from leading contemporary binderies, Little Book of Bookmaking includes a practical section of 21 easy-to-follow illustrated tutorials.

    Through extraordinary, stylized photography and detailed close-ups of designs, the embroidery art in Stitchcraft is entirely achievable with basic stitches and easy-to-follow instructions, enchanting beginners and expert crafters alike. Stitchcraft features: - 30 intricate embroidery designs, using a combination of nine basic stitches- Insights from the author on how she created each piece - 30 basic patterns to get you started embroidering your own version of her designsFrom the anatomy of a snake to floral skulls, from palmistry hands to botanical hearts, readers will be inspired to recreate Partridge's spellbinding designs and to make them their own.

    This book can help you bring all of these together in one beautiful creation.Here you'll see magnificent collages by leading artists who show you--in step-by-step demonstrations--how to begin, how to design, how to apply collage techniques in exciting ways.Plus you'll get your chance to use those techniques with nearly fifty projects that challenge you to do your most creative work.

    In Encaustic Workshop, it becomes much more: a dynamic medium where anything goes and the possibilities are endless.Packed with step-by-step techniques, helpful tips and diverse examples of completed works, Encaustic Workshop brings all the accessibility and excitement of a mixed-media workshop to your own workspace. If you're a beginner, you'll find everything you need to know to get started. If you're a more advanced crafter or fine artist, you'll discover things you never knew you could do with encaustic.Instructions and photos will guide you as you learn to:Apply, layer, color and carve wax to create artwork rich with texture and depth.Create collages that combine encaustic with papers, fabric, found objects, image transfers and more.Experiment with charcoal, inks, watercolors, pastels and other mediums to create unexpected effects in the wax.Then, complete step-by-step projects and an extensive inspirational gallery will show you how you can combine the techniques you've learned to create more complex works.Sign your creativity up for this Encaustic Workshop--then just melt, paint and play!

    Plus, get inspired by--and learn from the mistakes of--artists/business owners such as Jonathan Adler, Lotta Jansdotter, Denyse Schmidt, Jill Bliss, and many more.

    Get wild with printing, painting, drawing, stenciling, and other surface design methods and unique materials such as plastic bags, photographs, and cardboard. Dive into 12 simple sewing projects to make colorful, wearable, and hip designs, including a stunning wall quilt, adorable hats for kids or adults, a pretty wreath, cuff bracelets, and a modern ruffled apron.Artist Alisa Burke demonstrates many of the techniques and essentials of surface design and sewing on an included DVD. In addition to the in-depth video instruction, you’ll get a bonus project exclusively on the DVD.Whether you’re already a rule-breaker or you’re looking to improvise, Sew Wild shows you how to create fabric and designs that explode with color, pattern, and soul.

    As the stuff of life piles up and things spin out of control, we could all use a little help. These never-before-seen designs and how-tos are full of surprise and wonder. Learn how to turn everyday objects into spellbinding inventions to give away to friends or keep for yourself. Our simple self-improvement techniques will make you smarter, better-looking, and more well-adjusted. (RE) MAKE IT!This is the “sales copy” section. Here we will talk about how useful, delight-inducing, and excellently well put together this book is. If things have gone a little flat and you’re searching for inspiration, look no further. ReadyMade is full of fun projects for the whole family. It solves problems, cures dizzy spells, and holds open the door. It has a collegial, ’50s garage tinkerer sensibility. It read Popular Science as a kid and dreamt of building rockets. It launches with fiery trails. It soars. When it falls, it brushes itself off and starts over. It is the Captain of Creativity. Resistance is futile. This book is 100% hope.First project: Personalize this book and protect it from theft by cutting out this portion of the cover and replacing it with your own photo. (See page 16)

    From brides who want to address their wedding invitations to do-it-yourselfers who want to prepare certificates or make a family tree, and even for art journalers and scrapbookers who like creative text in their works, calligraphy books and classes are hot.This new-in-hardcover book will spark the interest of the calligraphy novice by introducing a new approach to lettering, one that combines a lively combination of traditional lettering styles, fun and scripty modern styles, and artsy street-style lettering, along with project ideas that incorporate creative lettering.The book demonstrates the uses of traditional and cutting edge lettering tools, from classic calligraphy pens to bling-producing metallic foils and glue pens. It introduces a wide array of lettering styles with complete alphabets sample artworks that show an application. Fully stepped-out illustrations break down each letterform, taking the reader through each stroke and a large collection of gallery images provides further inspiration for how to use creative lettering in artwork.