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Create crafty cuteness with three new books from the Quarto Group
It is always great to have cute art books for your kids or as gifts for other kids. Here are some very lovely books I recommend. Let kids learn art in a fun way.
If you love anime and chibi, you’ve got to try Chibi Art Class: A Complete Course in Drawing Chibi Cuties and Beasties by Instagram sensation and anime artist Yoai. Chibi Art Class teaches how to draw and color charming chibi people and their signature features and props. You’ll find step-by-step instruction on drawing, coloring, and shading these vertically challenged, baby-faced characters and their kawaii little companions.
Chibi Art Class by Yoai
On-Sale Date: March 26, 2019 · $19.99 US · $25.99 CAN · 144 pages · Paperback · ISBN: 9781631065835
Race Point Publishing
Soap carving has gained huge popularity online, but while most online videos are of cutting or carving soap bars into shavings, Ultimate Soap Carving offers instruction on creating cool and adorable designs, as well as how to use shavings to make new bars and other simple body care products – author Makiko Sone (aka Mizutama Soap) even shows fun ways to gift your carvings once you’re done!
Ultimate Soap Carving by Makiko Sone
On-Sale Date: March 26, 2019 · $19.99 US · $25.99 CAN · 128 pages · Trade Paperback · ISBN: 9781631597244
Quarry Press
If you like to draw and are drawn to all things adorable, you’ll love Draw 62 Animals and Make Them Cuteby Heegyum Kim! Kim leads us step-by-step in sketching dozens of charming creatures from bees to whales. Each project begins with easy-to-follow visual steps to build the animal, ending with variations you can try as you practice. Perfect for beginning artists or those looking to shake up their routine with a blast of cuteness.
Draw 62 Animals and Make Them Cute by Heegyum Kim
On-Sale Date: March 26, 2019 · $19.99 US · $25.99 CAN · 128 pages · Paperback · ISBN: 9781631596759
Quarry Books
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Celebrate International Women’s Day With These Amazing Authors!
The Woman’s Book of Prayer: 365 Blessings, Poems and Meditations by Becca Anderson, $19.99
We are constantly communing with the Divine throughout our daily lives―even in the most ordinary activities. Sitting in silence, walking meditation, using prayer beads or folding your hands every night and talking to God are all forms of prayer. If you want something different in your life, you must pray a different prayer. The Woman’s Book of Prayer will show you all the ways you can pray, so you can find the methods that work for you. Comprised of mindfulness meditations, prayer practices and selections of sacred texts, poems and blessings, The Woman’s Book of Prayer gathers words of encouragement, comfort and sustenance for women. Author Becca Anderson credits her recovery from a serious illness to the power of daily prayer. But she had to change the way she prayed and set off on an exploration of the myriad methods people use and uncovering the world’s best prayers. The Woman’s Book of Prayer shows how to change your life by changing your prayer. By carefully and consciously choosing affirming thoughts and deliberately looking for blessings at every opportunity, you will literally create a new life for yourself.
A Life Full of Glitter: A Guide to Positive Thinking, Self-Acceptance, and Finding Your Sparkle in a (Sometimes) Negative World by Anna O’Brien, $24.99
Bullying, loss, regret and fear impact our lives in tough-to-deal-with ways. Learn how to confront these and other challenges like the world’s happiest people do—as opportunities. Armed with humor and a good attitude, author Anna O’Brien will teach you how to combat the negativity of life in this motivational self-help guide. A Life Full of Glitter will show you how much creativity, physical activity and social interactions affect your day to day life. Learn how to maximize these expressive activities to release pent up emotions and frustration in order to have a fresh view of the world each and every day. It can be difficult to process and move on from unresolvable issues that are holding us back from our most positive lives. A Life Full of Glitterintroduces the concept of “long-game” thinking, which will help you re-frame temporary setbacks and focus on long-term happiness. Discover easy-to-use tips and tricks to increase your positivity and personal growth. A Life Full of Glitter is a modern guide to positive thinking presented through relevant research, captivating storytelling, and plenty of humor.
Still I Rise: The Persistence of Phenomenal Women by Marlene Wagman-Geller, $16.95
When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa’s brutal Robben Prison, he tirelessly turned to the poem “Invictus”, the inspirational verse by the Victorian William Ernest Henley, penned on the occasion of the amputation of his leg. Still I Rise takes its title from a work by Maya Angelou and it resonates with the same spirit of an unconquerable soul: a woman who is captain of her fate. Just as “Invictus” brought solace to generations, so does Angelou’s contemporary classic. Still I Rise embodies the strength of character of the inspiring women profiled. Each chapter will outline the fall and rise of great women heroes who smashed all obstacles rather than letting all obstacles smash them. The book offers hope to those undergoing their own Sisyphean struggles. Intrepid women heroes are the antithesis of the traditional damsels in distress: rather than waiting for the prince, they took salvation into their own hands.
Women Who Launch: The Women Who Shattered Glass Ceilings by Marlene Wagman-Geller, $16.95
Dorothy Parker observed, “It’s a man’s world”; the lady entrepreneurs and game-changers profiled in Women Who Launch would beg to differ. Unlike many matrons of the 1950s, these kick-ass females left their DNA in the annals of time. Julia Ward-Howe showed what’s good for the goose is good for the gander when she created the Girl Scouts of America. Sara Joseph Hale, authoress of Mary had a Little Lamb, convinced Lincoln to launch a national day of thanks, while Anna Jarvis persuaded President Wilson to initiate a day in tribute of mothers. Estee Lauder revolutionized the cosmetics industry. The tradition of these Mothers of Invention continued when, compliments of knitter Krista Suh, the heads of millions were adorned with pink, pussy-cat ears in the largest women’s march in history. Women Who Launch is filled with inspiring true stories of women activists, artists, entrepreneurs who launched some of the most famous companies, brands, and organizations today and changed the world. It is at once a collection of biographies and a testament of female empowerment. These women who launched prove, in the words of Rosie the Riveter, “We can do it!” Find motivation in your career and life with the amazing history of women entrepreneurship, activism, and leadership.
Badass Women Give the Best Advice
Badass Women Give the Best Advice by Becca Anderson, $15.95
Women’s Studies scholar Becca Anderson has gathered the wisdom from a chorus of fabulous femmes for this one-of-a-kind advice book. From housewives to Hollywood starlets, from standup comedians to startup entrepreneurs, from feminists to Facebook queens, these badass women offer unvarnished and unabashed opinions about love, life, word, men, and sex and share their very frank and forthright thinking on the wild world of relationships. This delightfully dishy gathering of gal pals is like having a heart-to-heart with 200 of your closest friends. Garrulous girls and loquacious ladies of from every walk of life unleash their wicked wit in this humorous and enlightening compilation and tell it like it is. Topics include What the World Needs Now, Love Hurts, Lost Love, and Are Men Really Necessary and cover sex, personal ads, blind dates, break ups, weddings, and the prerequisites for the perfect kiss. Sidebars include quizzes, love and sex bucket lists and topics like “Size Really Does Matter,” and “Cry Me a River, The Weepiest Romantic Movies Ever.” Wait, there’s more–true tales about wild women of yore that entertain as much as they enlighten. From Anais Nin to Lily Tomlin, from Amy Bloom to Dorothy Allison, from Drew Barrymore to Chrissy Teigan and beyond, there’s no shortage of sass, sarcasm, or sizzle and a few shocks along the way!
Badass Affirmations: The Wit and Wisdom of Wild Women by Becca Anderson, $15.99
If you affirm yourself every day, you can rule the world. More importantly, you can live a life filled with love, joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction thanks to your own positive self-regard. Badass Affirmations is the ultimate motivating, encouraging, and uplifting book to enjoy and share. Create your own ideal life and build your self-esteem with these positive daily affirmations. These very wise words have the power to touch our hearts, build confidence, make us laugh, and alleviate our stress―all while realizing the vast potential life has to offer. Becca Anderson, bestselling author of The Book of Awesome Women, serves up a memorable and inspirational banquet of positive self-affirmations, delicious bon mots, quips, and unforgettable quotes from movie stars, musicians, politicians, and women writers. Everyone from Malala to Madonna to Michelle Obama weighs in on the meaning of life with badass wit and timeless wisdom.
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Entertaining and Celebrating: An Elegant Feast For Every Season By Kristal Damron
Make any meal a celebration with a new guide which brings together everything a host or hostess needs to create lasting memories around food and family. Seasonally organized recipes, menus, tablescapes and décor ideas, and wine pairings come together in one comprehensive resource. Entertaining and Celebrating: An Elegant Feast for Every Season [May 2019] brings together Chef Kristal Damron’s experience as a working mom, enthusiastic hostess, caterer and professional chef to show you how to elevate your dining experience.
A visual extravaganza, this coffee table treasure takes you through a year featuring monthly themes highlighting each season’s bounty. The themes are designed to spark your own creativity, with stylish table settings, four-course menus with cocktail and wine pairings, and suggested ways to serve that will wow your guests. Cultivating a warm and casual mood while dishing up flawless execution and service is what Entertaining and Celebrating is all about.
“In the fast-paced complexity of the modern world, many of us have
lost the art of slowing down to appreciate the simple pleasures in life,” Chef Damron says. “Preparing to entertain is an example: setting the table, creating an ambience, planning the menu and wine, paying attention to the details and beauty of things.”
It’s easy for a home cook to become overwhelmed at the thought of pulling off an elegant meal when shuttling the kids to soccer practice or working in that evening conference call. But Chef Damron makes a special dining experience accessible to everyone.
“Many of us have forgotten how to make dining meaningful and the rush to do other activities has become a priority,” Chef Damron adds. “As a result, we look for quick, easy fixes and convenience. Or we are unable to visualize how the event should look, and then, we talk ourselves out of planning it.”
This one-stop guide takes the stress and guesswork out of creating a memorable meal. Whether it is for weekday family dinners or more extravagant occasions, you’ll find yourself reaching for Entertaining and Celebrating again and again.
Working for more than 20 years in corporate finance, Chef Damron wanted to redesign her life to bring her family and community to the center. She switched gears, completed culinary school and started Reward Your Appetite Catering in Phoenix, AZ. She brings her culinary and catering expertise together with her passion for creating attainable elegance to everything from weekday dinners to special celebrations.
“To be able to sit together around a stylishly laid table, have a glass of wine, and appreciate each other’s company creates lasting memories. To listen to a person’s story and have them listen to yours, rejoicing, laughing, and reducing the stress of your life develops true community,” says Chef Damron.
In an inspiring and informative interview, Chef Damron can offer insights into the following:
- How to cook and entertain for the seasons
- Ideas for full menus, décor and drinks for every month of the year
- How to work from an established menu and entertaining guide and pull it off flawlessly
- How to pick and choose the recipes and ideas that work for your guests to put together a more unique gathering
- Doing it all while maintaining an active family and work life
“It can be challenging to come up with ideas for how to create this kind of dining experience,” adds Chef Damron. “Searching for ideas on the internet can be overwhelming. I want to make it easy and provide ideas and inspiration that you can implement together or pick and choose what works for your entertaining style and your guests.”
ABOUT KRISTAL DAMRON:
Chef Kristal Damron is the owner of Reward Your Appetite Catering, a fine dining catering company committed to providing exquisite culinary dishes with exemplary service.
Chef Damron spent more than 20 years in corporate finance before redesigning her life around her family and her passion – entertaining. Chef Damron has a Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Masters of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She graduated, with honors, from the Arizona Culinary Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband, Jared, and their two daughters, Arianna Victoria and Alexandria Isabella. She and her family enjoy traveling, visiting parks and museums, and spending time with family and friends.
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Dive into the world of bookbinding with BOOKFORMS
Immerse yourself in a new book, one you create from start to finish!
With Bookforms: A complete guide to designing and crafting hand-bound books, from the Center for Book Arts, you’ll learn to create beautiful and unique handbound books in a variety of styles and formats.
Bookforms introduces you to the art and craft of both Western and Asian bookbinding. You’ll not only learn its history, but also how you can handcraft your own books. Projects include:
- Accordion Books
- Soft Leather Covers
- Coptic Bindings
- Pamphlets
- And more!
BOOKFORMS A COMPLETE GUIDE TO DESIGNING AND CRAFTING HAND
BOUND BOOKS, FROM THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS
Brought to you by the instructors at the Center for Book Arts in New York, Bookforms (Rockport Publishers / January 22, 2019 / $30.00 US) is a comprehensive guide for making books by hand with a focus on functionality in design.
Bookforms presents all the instruction you need to craft by hand a comprehensive array of historic bookbinding styles from all over the world. It traces the functional roots of each structure, explains their appropriateness for various uses, and provides projects for making an essential structure for each style of binding.
Topics covered include:
- Why books work: General bookbinding principles for functionality and what we can learn from the past.
- What you need to know for planning a special book or embarking on an edition.
- How materials affect function.
Bookforms tackles a wide range of projects for all levels of bookbinders. You’ll see everything from sewn and ticketed blank books and traditional western codex book forms, to scrapbooks and albums, Asian stab-sewn bindings, unusual structures, and aesthetics/embellishments. What better time to dive into this venerable and unique hobby than now?
The Center for Book Arts is one of the few contemporary arts organizations dedicated to the art of the book. Founded in 1974 in Manhattan, it was the first not-for-profit organization of its kind in the nation, and has since become a model for others around the world. The Center promotes active explorations of both contemporary and traditional artistic practices related to the book as an art object. It facilitates communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary visual and literary arts. They achieve their mission through exhibitions, classes, public programming, literary presentations, opportunities for artists and writers, publications, and collecting.
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Curl up and embroider the winter away with two great needlework books!
Essential Know-How for Hand Stitching
By Lynn Krawczyk
Hand Sewing Magic is an essential reference to all things stitching, featuring how-tos for dozens of stitches, from the basics for sewing and mending to stunning embroidered embellishment.
Hand Sewing Magic is a modern, all-in-one guide for hand stitchers of all levels of skill and experience, and for all applications. In this unique guide book you will:
- Get an in-depth overview of essential tools and materials, including thread, needles, fabric, and other key supplies.
- Explore a comprehensive visual dictionary of 35 stitches plus dozens of variations, from basic mending to stylish decorative embellishment to unique art stitching.
- Discover key techniques, from starting and ending threads to the right way to use an embroidery hoop, from stitching curved shapes to color shading, and more.
- Learn essential tips and tricks from influential and innovative stitchers, including Joanne Sharpe, Allison Aller, and Catherine Redford.
- 10 simple and stunning projects show unique ways to use stitches and techniques.
With Hand Sewing Magic, you’ll make the most of your hand stitching and give all your projects a beautiful handmade look.
Paperback | 144 pages | ISBN: 9781589239685 | $24.99 US, $32.99 CAN | Published December 4, 2018
About the author:
Lynn Krawczyk is a mixed-media surface design artist who focuses on pattern and color. Her work features painting, drawing, and hand stitching on both fabric and paper. Lynn has written nearly 50 magazine articles for such publications as Quilting Arts Magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors, Uppercase, Fiber Art Now, and Sew Somerset, and is the author of The Hand-Stitched Surface (CPi, 2017) and Intentional Printing: Simple Techniques for Inspired Fabric Art (Interweave, 2014).She also has a collection of floss with thread manufacturer Aurifil, Inked by Lynn Krawczyk, as well as three instructional DVD workshops with Quilting Arts/F&W Media: Print, Design, Compose; Color Theory Made Easy; andThermofax Screen Printing Essentials. Lynn teaches surface design workshops at various venues throughout the United States. She lives in Plymouth, Michigan.
380 Stitch Motifs for Dog Moms and Dads
By MakikoArt
I Love My Dog Embroidery is a collection of 380 adorable dog-themed stitch motifs for pooch parents and their beloved fur babies, with project ideas, how-tos, and templates.
Created by embroidery artist MakikoArt and six other amazing embroidery artists, this “dog fanciful” collection of stitch motifs celebrates all things canine. With this lovely embroidery guide, you can create all manner of pups, including:
- The sweet Labrador retriever, fluffy poodle, noble German shepherd, and many others
- Dogs doing what they do best—classic poses, postures, and tricks—like “roll over,” “give me your paw,” and the ever-popular “rub my tummy”
- Pooches disguised as people—the farmer, the artist, the businessman—and who can resist the sneaky but lovable mailman?
- Mutts in different styles and shapes, including borders, frames, and alphabets
You’ll also find guidance on how to customize a motif to fit your favorite Fido, plus a gallery of project ideas for showcasing your stitches. So grab a needle and floss and take everything in your home and wardrobe from drab to double-dog fabulous!
Paperback | 120 Pages | ISBN: 9781631596131 | $19.99 US, $25.99 CAN | Published: December 11, 2018
About the author:
Oksana Kokovkina — better known to her fans as MakikoArt—is a textile artist and jewelry designer noted for her naive and whimsical animal embroidery motifs, especially her hand-stitched custom pet portrait brooches. Born in St. Petersburg, she currently lives in Vienna, Austria.
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Make 2019 Your Year of Color with THE NEW COLOR MIXING COMPANION
Start the new year in a burst of color with The New Color Mixing Companion by Minnesota-based artist and Instagram star Josie Lewis!
The New Color Mixing Companion combines practical information with user-friendly projects for hands-on learning about mixing colorand creating palettes. In addition, it includes over a dozen geometric and meditative templates for you to continue your color mixing practice.
The New Color Mixing Companion (Quarry Books / $24.99 US) is a modern, hands-on guide to working with color featuring approachable projects that each explore a different aspect of color mixing.
This comprehensive guide starts with a crash course in essential terminology and visual vocabulary from artist and popular Instagrammer Josie Lewis. It then shows you how to go beyond the wheel and basic theory with hands-on projects that illustrate and illuminate a variety of color elements and techniques. The materials used—including watercolor and acrylic paints, and found or purchased collage papers—are accessible, inexpensive, and readily available. Plus, this art guide includes easy-to-use tear-out templates featured in many of the projects; their modern geometric layouts yield stunning color arrangements.
With The New Color Mixing Companion, artists, crafters, and designers of all skill levels will learn to take color in a whole new direction!
Artist and Instagram sensation Josie Lewis has taught college-level painting, drawing, art appreciation, and two-dimensional design, and also regularly teaches workshops, leads creative retreats, and hosts exhibitions in her Minneapolis studio. She has been featured onDesignSponge, Insider, High Times, and by many other social media influencers. Josie’s work has also been exhibited widely throughout the US and can be found in the collections of many private and public institutions, including Target Corporation, General Mills, University of Arizona at Phoenix and Flagstaff, and University of Minnesota. A two-time grant recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board, Josie has a BA from Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Originally from the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, she lives in the Twin Cities. See more of her work at josielewis.com.
The New Color Mixing Companion is available now from Quarry Books.
