(paperback: new)

Melt & pour soap crafts are fun, easy, and so indulgent! Handmade Soaps 101 gives you over 80 ideas for making soap for every skin type. You’ll learn to add fragrances, herbs, and oils to match any personality or taste. Use simple techniques to make a variety of soaps including:

• Marbled soaps
• Confetti soaps
• Layered soaps
• Embedded surprise soaps
• Cookie cutter soaps
• Molded soaps
• Loaf soaps
• Herbal soaps
• Soap on a rope

Want to create a stylish, hand-printed look on your craftsbut find traditional printmaking intimidating? Then stamp it! Ten top designers, each with a distinctive style, have devised a collection of 45 stunning stamped projects plus 200 easily duplicated motifs. The stamps themselves are made of readily available household or store-bought items, and a lavishly photographed basics section walks beginners through the techniques, from transferring images to cutting and carving the stamps to inking. Make gift tags, stationery, wrapping paper, invitations, building blocks, and more!

(paperback: new)

This new edition of a best-selling book is a must-have for all lovers of ribbon embroidery and stumpwork.

Di van Niekerk shows you how to make flowers, leaves and little creatures in a gorgeous flower sampler that you can use to embellish anything from crazy patchwork and quilts to home-made cards as well as clothing and accessories.

There are over 30 designs to stitch with a comprehensive, illustrated stitch glossary of more than 40 stitches.

Ideal for first-time embroiderers as well as those who wish to brush up on certain techniques.

Animals and birds are popular subjects in crewel embroidery, and here Hazel introduces needlework to the beautiful, exotic creatures found in the African wild. Using the Jacobean embroidery style for which she is well known, and incorporating the subtle influence of the fractal designs found in zentangle art, Hazel also brings beads and other three-dimensional elements into her designs to capture the stunning and colourful art that is traditionally associated with Africa. Those new to Hazel’s work will find the essential crewel stitchesm needle-lace and needle-weaving techniques needed in an esy-to-follow how-to section and stitch gallery inside the book, and all embroiderers will be impressed by the wealth of design ideas and inspiration Crewel Creatures has to offer.

With every project, step-by-step instructions and gorgeous photographs are included, along with a template of the design, All the projects are stitched and embellished on natural coloured linen, making them not only perfect for framing for display but also wonderfully economical for embroiders to work on.

For readers looking for something different and new to stitch, and for those keen to challenge themselves with more complex embroidery techniques, this latest addition to Hazel’s Crewel series is an absolute must-have.

The joy of working with a Jacobean shape is that it is a blank canvas waiting to be filled.

Using only cotton, rayon and metallic threads, along with beads and crystals, the designs in this book are embroidered onto cotton, linen, taffeta and silk. The techniques, whilst making full use of crewel embroidery stitches, borrow extensively from other styles and other needlecrafts. Needle Lace, Brazilian and Bead Embroidery, Stumpwork and last of all Loom Weaving methods have been incorporated into the embroidery that fills the Jacobean shapes in all of the designs.

Every project is clearly explained with step-by-step instructions and lots of photographs, and the completed embroideries are displayed in ways that are both decorative and functional in the home. Templates of the original designs complete this magnificent source for creative embroidery.

Filled with common sense, this book sets out to show you how to take Jacobean or Crewel embroidery into the 21st century.