Christi Johnson offers unique patterns inspired by botanicals, animals, numbers, the cosmos, earth elements, zodiac signs, and mythical beasts, for novice or well-practiced crafters to combine into talismans with personal meaning. Johnson’s folk art style is vibrant and unintimidating and provides a framework for bringing spiritual elements into physical form.

    Learn to determine your cost of goods, set prices, identify the competition, and understand the ins and outs of wholesale and retail sales. Explore the various sales venues available, including independent craft fairs, Web sites such as Etsy, and traditional stores, and learn to maximize your visibility and sales in each one. Want to start your own website? Chapin shows you how to style and prop your crafts for photography and explains how the most popular Web marketplaces operate. You’ll find everything you need to turn your talent into profits.

    Living Out Loud is the perfect prescription for a creative jump start to your life. Included are games, projects, activities, crafts, postcards, and playful ideas that will send you off on an exciting adventure, where you'll discover inspiration around and within you.

    Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects.

    Artist's Journal Workshop provides all the guidance, structure and inspiration you need to create a meaningful art-journaling practice. Starting with the question, What do you want from your journal? you'll build a sound journaling concept that will serve your unique creative needs and give you the freedom to practice, play and develop as an artist. Featuring rich visual examples on every page, you'll receive continual guidance and inspiration from:- 27 international artists who share pages and advice from their own art journals - More than 25 hands-on exercises to help you personalize your journal while developing new ideas and techniques - Journal pages featuring travel sketching, nature studies and celebrations of daily life - Prompts for visually commemorating life events and milestones - Support for working through creative doubts and blocks - A range of artistic styles and perspectives to study and admire - Instruction for trying your hand at new methods and materialsThis is the perfect opportunity for you to begin realizing your artistic potential--one page at a time. Begin the journey today!

    Freehand breaks down basic drawing techniques into bite-sized chunks, and reveals their practical application in dazzling examples by today's coolest artists. Over 200 innovative works of art demonstrate all the fundamentals—line, tone, composition, texture, and more—and are presented alongside friendly text explaining the simple techniques used to achieve each stylish effect. The final section of the book offers aspiring artists essential reference materials to hone their drafting skills and practice what they've learned. Petite in size but comprehensive in scope, this hip handbook will teach artists of all skill levels how to find their personal drawing style and start making amazing sketches.

    A Dutch artist offers his concept of seeing and drawing as a discipline by which the world may be rediscovered, a way of experiencing Zen.

    We now make up more than half the workforce in the United States and are busier than ever with partners, children, family and friends, often putting the needs of others ahead of our own.And if we feel overwhelmed by it all or fall short of perfection, many of us have learned to be our own worst critic rather than our own best friend.In Warrior Goddess Training, bestselling author HeatherAsh Amara provides the antidote to the flawed idea that you are not enough.Direct, honest, and unapologetic, Amara will show you how to release the layers of expectations to finally see yourself for the authentic, perceptive, perfect woman you really are.If you don't love and honor yourself with every fiber of your being, if you struggle with owning your power and passion, if you could use more joyful play and simple presence in your life, then it is time for an inner revolution.It is time to claim your Warrior Goddess energy.Drawing on the wisdom from Buddhism, Toltec wisdom, and ancient Earth-based goddess spirituality, the Warrior Goddess path includes personal stories, rituals, and exercises that will encourage and inspire you to become the true warrior goddess you are meant to be.

    In The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, established Watson-Guptill author and noted instructor/painter Suzanne Brooker presents the fundamentals necessary for mastering landscape oil painting, breaking landscapes down into component parts: sky, terrain, trees, and water. Each featured element builds off the previous, with additional lessons on the latest brushes, paints, and other tools used by artists. Key methods like observation, rendering, and color mixing are supported by demonstration paintings and samples from a variety of the best landscape oil painters of all time. With The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, oil painters looking to break into landscape painting or enhance their work will find all the necessary ingredients for success.

    From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture.

    With over 101 of the most popular, interesting, and indispensable tricks for working with acrylic-each with its own step-by-step demonstration-there is literally page after page of acrylic instruction and inspiration for readers to discover. A gallery of finished art at the back of the book will show readers how to combine different tricks to use in their artwork offering them real-life applications for acrylic techniques.

    The focus of Zentangle is on the process of creation, rather than the end result. The beauty of Zentangle is that there is no right way or wrong way. If you can draw a line and a circle (perfectly or not), you can Zentangle. Zentangle is an art concept that is engaging, approachable, and fun enough for someone who has never picked up any art tools or created a piece of art, yet is still meditative, productive, and creative enough for an advanced artist to enjoy. While many popular Zentangle books share tips, inspiration, and final artwork, there are few that break down Zentangle into a step-by-step process. Structured to be part instruction, part inspiration, and part doodling, The Art of Zentangle will first demonstrate how to create Zentangle art by showing intricate patterns broken out into several steps. After artists have warmed up and are ready to give it a try on their own, they’ll be invited to practice creating their own Zentangle designs on the beautifully designed blank pages of this inspirational sketch journal. A short gallery of final artwork and several inspirational prompts are included in this comprehensive introduction to the new, inspirational world of Zentangle.

    In Storms Can't Hurt the Sky, Gabriel Cohen bravely delves into his personal experience-along with insights from Buddhist masters, parables, humor, social science studies, and interviews with other divorces-to provide a practical and very helpful guide to surviving the pain of any break-up. Focusing on the emotions most common in the dissolution of a relationship-anger, resentment, loss, and grief -- Storms Can't Hurt the Sky shows how thinking about these feelings in surprisingly different ways can lead to a radically better experience. This compulsively readable book offers sound advice and much-needed empathy for anyone dealing with a break-up.

    Tamara’s kind, non-judgmental voice guides your way. What is holding you back? Where do you want to go? Let go of the past! Use these expressive exercises to help you recognize your personal challenges and other obstacles, then work through them. Let go of limiting beliefs, find courage, feel gratitude, heal pain, and develop self-love as you playfully create. Each themed chapter presents four to five two-part projects. First, you will explore a common issue that hampers creativity and/or positive self-worth. The second portion is a step-by-step mixed-media art project designed to help you work through that issue. Just a few of the explorations:Let go of what no longer serves you by taking stock of what’s holding you back, then create a zentangle butterfly to symbolize you flying away from those limiting things.Embrace and love your inner quirky bird by taking an inventory of your quirky traits, then create a bird that celebrates them.Heal old wounds by writing a letter to yourself as a child, then create a house to keep your inner child safe.Adding rich variety to the messages and art inspiration, some of the project outlines have been contributed by Tamara's guest teachers: Roxanne Coble, Andrea Gomoll, Alena Hennessy, Mystele Kirkeeng, Ivy Newport, and Effy Wild, each of whom are noted mixed-media artists in their own right. The final chapter presents a simple binding method for creating a keepsake book of your Life Book projects. Steeped in inspirational images and uplifting affirmations, Create Your Life Book can help you achieve both personal and creative growth.

    In this book Lamott explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped shreds of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together, one stitch at a time. It’s in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humor, and humanity.