The Crafter's Recipe Book

I love this book. It is very concise and densely filled with idea after idea of creating different kinds of textures and surfaces and small constructions and patterns and subtle image tranformations using a variety of (mostly) easy to locate or purchase materials in extremely creative, rich ways. It is wonderful fodder for the imagination of art teachers, set decorators, designers, artists in a variety of media, and crafters looking to add spice and variety to their creations. However the reader is assumed to bring a certain amount of vision to the table and this book would be frustrating for a paint by the numbers type. The book is a compendium of ideas with enough instruction to achieve the desired results, but how you use it is up to you, and it helps to have some artistic background to fully utilize the ideas herein.

This is wonderful book for crafters of all types. With 200 different projects, you're sure to find something to perk your interest. It is amazing how simple many of the techniques are and the stunning results that can be achieved with them. There are tons of fresh ideas here for fabric, paper and other materials. Each technique has a color example of the product and a materials list. While the instructions are brief, usually taking only a few lines, they are for the most part easy to follow. Basic instructions for sewing and knitting as well as stencils and patterns are also included in the back.Some techniques taught include carving paper, crayon batik, ice marbling, smocking paper, faux stained glass, inlaid felt designs, branding fabric, photo emulsion transfer and sand painting, knitting wire and icing with plaster. Mini galleries showing experiments in things like paste paper, tea dyeing and fabric stippling in additional to numerous other variations and combinations throughout the book are there to help guide and inspire you. Though this is not a rubber stamp book, per se, I highly recommend it for rubber stamp, paper and fabric artists alike. The techniques taught here make great accents and backgrounds, adding spice to any project.

Have you ever hit a creative dry spell? Do you need new inspiration every once in awhile to get motivated again? If so, this is the book for you! The Crafter's Recipe Book is a compendium of ideas for you to try. While it provides examples and directions on how to achieve the pictured results, the idea is to help you generate new ideas for your art. It is not a step-by-step project guide; rather, it provides you with a resource of techniques to help you achieve new and exciting results.The ideas are imaginative, beautiful and interesting. The recipes cover paper, fabric and "other" materials. It's definitely worth the money!

The book is a powerhouse that is just crammed full of methods and techniques that are useful to anyone who loves to "make stuff". Both paper artists and fabric artists can find some new ideas within this book's pages. This is a techniques book and not a "step-by-step" project book, so you get a lot more information for your money. I have tons of stamping/collage/mixed media books, and this one is one of my all time favorites. It covers a wide range of methods - ice marbling, shattering glass, wire sculpting, icing with plaster, all sorts of exotic ideas. Has a slew of fabric techniques as well. This book is a real winner!