Book Review: Creative Marker Art & Beyond

I'm finishing my Book Week with a lovely crafty book: Creative Marker Art and Beyond: inspiring tips, techniques, and projects for creating vibrant artwork in marker, by Lee Foster-Wilson of Bonbi Forest.

 

A couple of years ago Lee took part in the 100 Day Project, setting herself the challenge of doing a marker pen drawing a day, picking the pens at random to force herself to try new colour combinations and make the most of her pen stash.

During the project she learned loads about working with markers and totally fell in love with them as a medium... and now she's written a book to share her top tips and get us all inspired to get doodling.

 

The book starts with a quick introduction to the different types of marker pens available (permanent markers, paint markers, metallic markers, brush markers, and more), the basics of colour theory and some useful drawing techniques like crosshatching and stippling.

The rest of the book is made up of Creativity Prompts (e.g. drawing from nature), Marker Exercises (e.g. simplifying your sketches to create stylised motifs), and Step-by-Step Projects (e.g. decorating rocks with your drawings). This mix makes the book part creative workbook with ideas to spark your creativity and blank pages for you to get doodling straight away, and part how-to guide with projects that you can either recreate or use as inspiration for your own makes.

 

There are ten sections in the book, each with a creativity prompt, marker exercise and step-by-step project - some loosely connected, some directly following on from each other (for example, in one section you try hand lettering, then try out ideas for embellished lettering, then decorate a notebook using lettering to create a personalised design).

As you work through the book you'll learn lots of different ways to use markers, including some fab ideas for using markers which are drying out and starting to fade (which you'd normally just throw away). The project ideas are also all lovely, and are great examples of the versatility of markers and the many different surfaces you can decorate them.

 

I would have liked a bit more detail in some of the step-by-step tutorials, as there are a couple of points where the instructions are not as clear as they could be. For example, there's a fabric banner project where you need "primed fabric in a banner shape of your choice" but it's not explained how you're supposed to "prime" your fabric, or with what.

I also would have loved a section with patterns and motifs to trace, so we could recreate the projects show in the book exactly - because they're a lot nicer than most of my doodles!

It's also worth noting that to make the projects in the book you will need quite a wide range of different markers (standard permanent markers, fine liners for detail, brush markers for layering colours, and paint markers for drawing on glass and rocks) as the different types of pens write on different surfaces and behave in different ways. You could use a lot of the drawing techniques to get doodling with a basic pack of markers, but many of the cool project ideas do require fancier pens.

I think you would almost definitely want to buy more pens after buying this book, though! Lee's enthusiasm for markers is pretty infectious and she's done a great job of showing how versatile they can be, and how many lovely things you can draw and make with them.

If you want a detailed book of drawing techniques, or a book with patterns where you can make the exact project shown in the book then this is not the book for you. However, if you've got a neglected pack of markers in a drawer somewhere (or you've always been tempted by those big packs of different colours you get in stationery shops but never knew what do with them) and want to flex your creative muscles a bit and get doodling, then this book could be the start of your very own love affair with marker art.

Creative Marker Art and Beyond: inspiring tips, techniques, and projects for creating vibrant artwork in marker is published by Walter Foster Publishing. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other websites and bookshops.

I received a free review copy of this book from the publishers. Please note that the Amazon and Book Depository links in this blog post are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase I get a tiny percentage for the referral. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps support my blog.

P.S. The Mandalas to Embroider giveaway ends on 10th May, have you entered yet?

P.P.S. Visit my book reviews archive for a look at lots more crafty books!

Book Review: Craft a Life You Love

My Book Week continues today with a look at Craft a Life You Love: infusing creativity, fun & intention into your everyday by Amy Tan, aka Amy Tangerine.

Amy self-published Craft a Life You Love last year, and this revised and expanded edition has now been published by Abrams Books. This isn't a "how to" craft book or a "grow your creative business!" book, but is instead essentially a self-help book for people with creative hobbies.

It's about how to find the time and motivation to fit more creative projects into your schedule, and how crafting and creativity can enrich our lives and make us happier. Beyond this, Amy (who seems like an incredibly upbeat, positive person) explores ways in which we can take control of our lives to create "a life you love": being more positive, learning to love ourselves (with all our quirks), and focusing on our priorities and goals.

 

The book is divided into six themed chapters with titles like "Crafting the Soul" and "Crafting Happiness through Habits", then sub-divided into 28 smaller sections. Each section begins with a memoir-like story from Amy's life showing something she's learned, or how she makes use of a certain habit or attitude in her everyday life, and ends with an exercise for you to follow to put the ideas from that section into action.

Most of the exercises involve written prompts for you to think about and respond to, with space for you to write down your responses. For example, there are pages to fill out tracking your daily tasks and how happy they make you, an exercise in rewriting negative thoughts into positive ones, and a list of prompts like "who is someone who gives me tremendous energy and why?" and "what does a perfect day look like?" to get you started on a daily journalling habit.

 

Early on in the book there's also a "permission slip" to sign (to give yourself permission to take time for your hobby to feed your soul) - Amy really believes in the power of writing stuff down!

Because of the workbook-like nature of this book, I'm not sure if this book would be great value if you're not the sort of person who is actually going to sit down and do the exercises suggested. Reading the book from cover-to-cover (which I did, for this review) without following any of the prompts doesn't take that long and you, naturally, skip a lot of blank pages along the way.

 

There's some good, practical advice in here, but some of the stuff about "synchronicity" between Amy and the "naturally benevolent" Universe made me raise my eyebrows and make little frowny faces while reading, and there are a few all-caps comments in my notes like "THIS IS NOT A SIGN FROM THE UNIVERSE, IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE!!!". I am honestly not sure that I have ever read a self-help book in my entire life that didn't cause me to have a few raised-eyebrow moments, though! I am quite cynical at heart (or maybe just British???) and I think I just reach a tipping point where the self-help speak gets a bit much and my internal commentary goes a bit shouty.

At the end of the day, this stuff doesn't make the good advice less good, or the practical tips less useful. Craft a Life You Love might have given me a few shouty all-caps moments, but I also wrote a whole bunch of positive notes while reading and have been thinking a lot about some of the advice in the book.

Overall, I think this would be a great book to work through if you have trouble with confidence (not just creative confidence) and struggle to carve out time for your creative hobbies or other things in your life that bring you joy. I'd also recommend it to people who are feeling a bit "stuck" in their lives and daily routines: you don't have to keep feeling that way, and Craft a Life You Love has a lot of simple but useful tips for making small changes in your thinking and your habits to help you live your best life.

Craft a Life You Love: infusing creativity, fun & intention into your everyday is published by Abrams books. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other websites and bookshops.

I received a free review copy of this book from the publishers. Please note that the Amazon and Book Depository links in this blog post are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase I get a tiny percentage for the referral. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps support my blog.

P.S. Make sure you check out this week's giveaway - click here to read my review of Mandalas to Embroider, and for your chance to win a copy!

Visit my book reviews archive for a look at lots more crafty books! 

Next Week is Book Week!

Next week's blog posts are gonna be all about craft books. Specifically this trio of colourful, creative books:

On Monday I'll be reviewing Mandalas to Embroider: Kaleidoscope Stitching in a Hoop, by Carina Envoldsen-Harris. You'll get a chance to win your own copy of the book, too! (Yay!)

On Wednesday I'll be reviewing Craft a Life You Love: Infusing Creativity, Fun & Intention into your Everyday by Amy Tangerine.

Then on Friday I'll be looking at Creative Marker Art and Beyond: Inspiring Tips, Techniques & Projects for Creative Vibrant Artwork in Marker by Lee Foster-Wilson.

See you next week! :)


P.S. Just to let you know: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase I get a tiny percentage for the referral. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps support my blog.

Book Review: A World of Quilts

If you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen that I've been putting in lots of hours of work lately on the Christmas quilt I'm sewing for my sister. This seems like a good time to review one of the quilting books that's been on my "to review" pile for a while!

A few years ago I reviewed Quilt Love by Cassandra Ellis and adored it. Her aesthetic isn't my usual taste (I'm a sucker for really bright, bold colours) but Cassandra writes so passionately about quilt making and the joy of making special, meaningful quilts full of character, memories, history and emotion. The book was also really rather beautiful! I pretty much fell in love with it and the whole idea of making a quilt.

So, I was delighted when her publishers (Jacqui Small, who publish so many gorgeous titles) sent me a copy of the follow up - A World of Quilts - to review. Unfortunately they sent it at a time that I was feeling a little overwhelmed by work and it (and a few other titles) has sat on a shelf ever since. Hopefully this review will be worth the wait...

Like Quilt Love, A World of Quilts is a beautiful hardback. This time round the designs are inspired by quilting traditions around the world, with 25 contemporary quilt designs included in the book. The designs are inspired by styles such as Postage Stamp, Rail Fence, Kantha, Wild Goose Chase, Amish Sawtooth, Wholecloth, Utility, String, Welsh Bars, Log Cabin, Pojagi, Irish Chain and many more.

Then there's a "Quilt Masterclass" section, which covers everything from designing your quilt and choosing fabrics to binding the quilt and caring for the finished quilt. I found this section very useful when I came to start the actual quilting part of my Christmas quilt recently, it's filled with lots of helpful tips.

You can, of course, get a quilting how-to from lots of different books - so what makes this book special? For me, it's Cassandra's whole approach to quilting.

She writes in the book's introduction that she realised quilts were "the absolute summation of homes, families, communities and individuals. They were practical and very, very personal, which meant they became completely precious to the individual and family. Quilts represented both the maker's creativity and their family's history. As well as a means to provide warmth, quilts could be the ultimate storytellers."

Her writing is so encouraging and inspiring!

"Find a story and a quilt that moves you. Do not fret over your stitching skills or be anxious about your choice of fabric. Most of all, don't give a moment's thought to whether you feel you are creative. Just make."

She encourages you to work with fabrics that have real meaning to you, including recycling old shirts and dresses, and using luxurious fabrics like silk and velvet to create something really special. I'm so used to seeing quilts made with purpose-designed quilting cottons it makes a nice change seeing something like, for example, a quilt made from vintage saris.

Even the Masterclass section is inspiring. The advice isn't at all prescriptive, instead there's lots of emphasis on doing what works best for you and not worrying too much about small imperfections. "The Japanese have a philosophy of kaizen, which means continuous improvement while being happy with what you have created now - and I love this idea. Just remember, it is the making that is important, not the perfect triangle."

This is basically exactly what I needed to hear as I embarked on hand quilting my sister's quilt - it's being made with so much love, what does it matter if my stitching isn't quite straight and my stitches are a bit wonky?

Each of the 25 designs in the book is introduced with a page about the history of the traditional design or local quilting tradition which inspired it. Together these are like a mini history of quilt making, they're so interesting to read!

Then there's an in-situ photo of the quilt looking lovely and all the practical information needed to make the quilt. The projects are rated by difficulty: "easy", "a little more challenging" and "requires patience and concentration" so you can see which ones you feel up to tackling.

Each design is illustrated with a clear photo of the quilt laid out flat and (apart from the simplest designs in the book) also a diagram showing the arrangement of the pieces and the block sizes. Cassandra has also included a little "make it yours" section for each project, with suggestions for ways you could vary the design through your fabric choices, sizing, etc. Not much information is given about how she's chosen to actually quilt each design, though - the instructions focus mostly on making the quilt top then quilting and binding is covered in the Masterclass section.

All the designs in the book are inspired by traditional designs - these are Cassandra's interpretations of them, not a how to guide for sewing 25 different traditional quilts. For example, the English Paper Piecing quilt features just 66 pieced hexagons arranged in decorative rows across the quilt.

I love this idea of incorporating a time consuming, traditional technique in a contemporary quilt. The look is very fresh and - of course- the quilts will be much quicker to make!

All in all this is a really wonderful book and one I highly recommend if you're thinking about making a quilt, or even just curling up on the sofa reading about quilts and daydreaming about the one you'll make one day.

A World of Quilts: Designing and Making Contemporary Quilts Inspired by Traditional Patterns by Cassandra Ellis is published by Jacqui Small. RRP £25. It's available from Amazon UK, the Book Depository and many other bookshops. 

It's also been republished in the US as World of Quilts - 25 Modern Projects: Reinterpreting Quilting Heritage from Around the Globe, a paperback published by C&T Publishing, available on Amazon USA.

Please note: I was sent a free review copy of this book. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.

Book Review: Evolution: A Colouring Book

Colouring books are everywhere at the moment, as I'm sure you've noticed. I'm a big fan of the trend (I do love a nice bit of colouring in) so I was delighted to get a copy of this one to review...

Evolution: A Colouring Book, by Annu Kilpelainen "takes the concept of a colouring book and, well, evolves it a bit."

The book covers topics such as natural selection, continental drift and the mystery of what killed the dinosaurs.

It also includes lots of interactive elements. There are flaps to lift up, sea creatures to draw...

... and faces to mix and match to explore how our facial features have evolved over time.

There's also an experiment to follow and, of course, lots of great drawings to colour!

I tested the pages with colouring pencils and pens, and they both worked great.

The pages of the book are nice and thick so the pen didn't show through at all, hurrah!

This isn't something I'd buy for myself (it's not really part of the "adult colouring book trend") but it is the sort of colouring / activity book which I would have loved as a kid.

Dinosaurs + colouring in + science + fun interactive pages = an excellent combination!

Evolution: A Colouring Book is published by Cicada Books. RRP £9.95. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, the Book Depository and many other bookshops.

Please note: I was sent a free review copy of this book. The Amazon and Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.  

P.S. for more colouring goodness, check up my round-ups of awesome colouring books for grown ups - part one and part two.

Book Review: Studio Life

Reading about the new exhibition at the Barbican, Magnificent Obsessions: the Artist as Collector (which looks pretty darn awesome), I thought "this reminds me about that fab book I got sent to review about artists' studios and collections!"... followed swiftly by the horrible realisation that "OH MY GOSH I NEVER REVIEWED THAT BOOK!"

You see, I got sent a review copy of Studio Life: Rituals, Collections, Tools and Observations on the Artistic Process by Sarah Trigg aaages ago (it came out in the autumn of 2013!!). I took some notes for my review, took some photos and then somehow forgot to actually write the review. Ooops. I will take that "world's worst blogger" award now, thanks.

So, it is FINALLY time for me to review this book! Here goes...

Artist Sarah Trigg embarked on a fascinating project where she toured the country (the US) visiting her fellow artists in their studios, chatting to them about their creative process and artistic practice and photographing their "curiosities".
  
Studio Life features 100 of these artists, from painters and sculptors to photographers to video and performance artists. There are no "general views of their studios", portraits or photos of their artwork (except for one small image per artist in the index at the back of the book). Instead there are weird objects and collections, mascots, homemade tools, and lots of messy leftovers from making. 

 

 

After the introduction explaining the history of the project, the book contains 1-4 pages per artist with some text about Sarah's visit to their studio and photos of the objects that caught her interest.

Although lots of the photos are visually very interesting and the book itself is gorgeous and glossy this is not a coffee table book of pretty, stylish studio tours!

As one art critic (Barry Schwabsky) puts it in one of the blurbs on the back of the book, "the studio can be an externalized brain, a machine for thinking and doing" and Studio Life is pretty much a whistle-stop tour through the brains of 100 different artists.

 

 

 

It is completely fascinating reading about all these different artists' working processes and the stories behind the many and varied objects featured. I have to admit that I don't really like a lot of contemporary art but I am very interested in makers and making and inspiration and the creative process - though of course the things I make are very different to the kinds of things being made by these artists!

Sarah writes so well about each studio visit and the stories behind the objects she features. I've so enjoyed dipping in and out of this book to read about all the artists, their rituals and tools and habits and obsessions. In fact I'm actually now totally hooked and am working my way through the whole book, cover to cover, reading the interviews one by one.


Studio Life is published by the Princeton Architectural Press. RRP £21.99. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other bookshops.

Please note: I was sent a free review copy of this book. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.

Book Review: A Swedish Christmas

I don't know about you guys but I am really starting to get into the festive spirit. I've been wrapping gifts, writing cards, listening to some of my favourite Christmas songs while I've been working and watching lots of cheesy made-for-TV Christmas movies.

So I am definitely in the mood for today's book review: A Swedish Christmas: Simple Scandinavian Crafts, Recipes and Decorations by Caroline Wendt & Pernilla Wastberg.

There is lots of festive goodness inside this book, which is translated from the original Swedish.

It's a nice hardback, with lovely matte paper pages and pretty polkadot end papers...

... and lots of lovely photos! (I also love the handwritten-look of that font).

 

In an age when craft books have to compete with a vast sea of free online content found on blogs and via Pinterest, this stuff is very important, I think! A book that's nicely designed from cover to cover and is a pleasure to hold in your hands and look at = something print-outs from blogs just can't match.

There are lots of different projects / festive crafting ideas crammed into the book's 128 pages - 60 by my count, although that does include some variations. They're divided into five chapters: Enjoy the Festive Feast!, Time to Relax, December in Bloom, Around the Christmas Tree, & The Great Outdoors!

Lots of different crafts are included in the book, e.g: baking, stenciling, crochet, knitting, sewing and flower arranging. There are lots of different materials used too - fabric and yarn, of course, but also moss, tin cans, beads, wire, nail polish and even (in the case of this rather cool gingerbread man pot stand) cement!

 

As you'd expect from a book with so many project ideas, lots of the projects are quite simple with just a few steps of instructions... though there are a few with more detailed instructions, like the ones involving knitting and crochet.

But craft projects don't need to be complicated to be good ideas and fun to make! I particularly love this idea for creating a "Christmas tree" from an arrangement of pine branches and baubles:

These little elf cocktail sticks are also seriously cute!

There are a definitely projects in here that I am never going to make - I am, for example, never going to cover a stool with moss to use it as a garden ornament, and I am not going to make a bird feeder from a heart-shaped arrangement of red apples.

But there are lots of things I really want to try, like these awesome knitted plant pot covers (which I think would make great additions to plants you're giving as gifts but would also be a fab way to add some "winter cheer" to your space without having "Christmas" stuff everywhere)...

 

 
... these pretty, wrapped home-baked candy bars...

 

 ...  and these lovely little ice lanterns (though I'm not sure how long they'd last in the not-always-that-cold English winter?)

 

Overall, I think this is a really nice book with a good mix of quick and more complex projects, lots of different crafts to choose from and a "something for everyone" style that ranges from cute to stylish, and from quirky & fun to traditional. 

A Swedish Christmas: Simple Scandinavian Crafts, Recipes and Decorations by Caroline Wendt & Pernilla Wastberg is published by Floris Books. RRP £14.99. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other bookshops. You can also get 20% off copies bought directly from Floris Books with the discount code LUPIN13 (discount expires 31st December 2013)

[Disclaimer: Floris Books sent me a free review copy of this book. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links]

Book Review: Remarkable Rugs

Today I'm reviewing a book that's a bit different from the usual crafty books I tend to feature - it's not a book with tutorials, but a "coffee table" type book featuring the work of textile artist Phoebe Hart.

Remarkable Rugs: The Inspirational Art of Phoebe Hart by Harriet Hart and Caroline Clifton-Mogg features 42 of Phoebe's hand stitched designs. The book is a lovely hardback that's jam-packed with photos of her gorgeous rugs and wall hangings.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of Phoebe Hart before I was asked to review this book, but I'm delighted to have discovered her work - she was a very talented lady!

 

There's a short introduction which covers Phoebe's life, work and techniques. Then the designs are presented in themed chapters: Islands of the sun (inspired by her time living in the Caribbean), On the wing (lots of birds), A Peaceable Bestiary (assorted animals), Flowery Work (lots of florals), The Fruitful Harvest (seasonal fruit and vegetables), The House Beautiful (homes and their gardens, from cottages to mansions to farms) and In Celebration (designs celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, etc).

 

There's a photo of each piece, with a short description of the design. Then there's a full page photo (or a series of full page photos) showing close-ups of the design. When there's a series of close-up photos these tend to each be at a different scale - showing whole sections or "zoomed in" to show the really fine detail.

This shell design is one of my favourites:

 

I also adore this kitty! What a character.

Phoebe Hart's designs are intricate and quirky and quite beautiful. Looking at the photos of a whole design you admire it almost like you would a painting - the overall composition, the choice of colours, etc.

But the close-up photos are where you see the full beauty of the pieces as textiles and how much life they have in them as well as (of course) getting to see how Phoebe has constructed the different motifs.  

 

 
This is a gorgeous book that left me feeling the way I do when I've visited a great exhibition. If you're interested in textiles and, (like me), looking at these pictures made you go "oooh" I think you'll find this a really inspiring addition to your bookshelf.

Remarkable Rugs is published by Double-Barrelled Books. RRP £25. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other bookshops.

[Disclaimer: the publisher sent me a review copy of this book. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links]