Calling all makers: March is National Craft Month—so get creative and dive into your next project with these inspiring guides.


The Joy of Botanical Drawing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Drawing and Painting Flowers, Leaves, Fruit, and More by Wendy Hollender

A gorgeous, easy-to-follow, and inspiring guide to stunningly realistic botanical drawing that covers everything you need to draw our natural world.

Achieve amazingly realistic and vibrant botanical illustrations, from flowers so dazzling you feel as if you might be able to smell them, to tomatoes that look as if they’ve just been picked from the garden. Wendy Hollender is known for her vivid, detailed, and inspiring illustrations and in The Joy of Botanical Drawing, she helps you take your art to the next level by sharing her perfected techniques through short lessons that start simple, then build on the basics with easy-to-use and clear step-by-step illustrations. Using colored pencils and watercolor pencils, Hollender shows you how to accomplish scientifically accurate botanical portraits of a spiraling pine cone, a spiky chestnut, a fuchsia-tined radish, a graceful morning glory, and many more.


Modern Crochet: Patterns & Designs for the Minimalist Maker by Debrosse; Produced by Paige Tate & Co.

A comprehensive guide for beginning and experienced crocheters alike.

Modern Crochet elevates the craft for a new generation of makers. Learn how to choose proper tools, understand all things yarn, proficiently read a pattern, and autonomously complete any crochet project. This definitive resource for contemporary that includes 16 original patterns, extensive teaching and support, reference charts, and more.


Woodcraft: Master the Art of Green Woodworking with Key Techniques and Inspiring Projects by Barn the Spoon

Looking for a simpler, more natural way of working with wood? Create beautiful wooden objects from fresh green wood by becoming skilled in the crafts of whittling, ax-based furniture making, turning, and weaving.

With green woodworking there’s no need for costly materials and machinery. All you need to begin crafting is a log, an ax, and a hand knife.

Starting with selecting and splitting your very first log, let Woodcraft show you all the techniques of green woodworking and guide you step by step through a series of rewarding projects.

Learn to carve your own spoons, bowls, shrink boxes, and other objects; construct simple pieces of furniture, such as stools and side tables; turn wood on a pole lathe; and weave with willow rods and birch bark.


Small Garden Style: A Design Guide for Outdoor Rooms and Containers by Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer

A stylishly photographed guide to creating lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space—an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Petite gardens align with the movement to live smaller and create a life with less stuff and more room for living. But a more eco-friendly and efficient space doesn’t have to sacrifice style. In Small Garden Style, garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing.

A style quiz helps you focus in on your own personal garden style, be it traditional, modern, colorful, eclectic, minimalist, or globally inspired, then utilize every inch of your yard by considering the horizontal, vertical, and overhead spaces. You’ll learn how to design stunning planters and container gardens using succulents, grasses, vibrant-colored pots, and more. Hendry Eaton and Blaise Kramer recommend their favorite plants and decor for small gardens, along with lawn alternatives and inspiration for making garden accents such as a fire pit, front door wreath, instant mini orchard, boulder birdbath, patterned vines, perfumed wall, and faux fountain with cascading plants.


Beginner’s Guide to Screen Printing: 12 Beautiful Printing Projects with Templates by Erin Lacy

Screen printing is made accessible in this beautiful step-by-step guide featuring twelve projects.

In this Beginner’s Guide to Screen Printing, Erin Lacy shows you how to make your own screen using an embroidery hoop and silk fabric, and demonstrates how to create beautiful designs that are easy to achieve. Using modern techniques, screen printing is an accessible and affordable craft!

Discover how to print onto different surfaces such as wood, cork and fabric, and create twelve stunning, botanical and coastal-themed projects through bright and colorful step-by-step photography. The book includes full-size templates and inspiration on how to design your own templates and motifs.


House Industries Lettering Manual by Ken Barber; Foreword by Jimmy Kimmel

Learn the history and techniques of hand lettering from a renowned design studio. This practical and visual guide features exercises, case studies, and typographic models for letter styles such as serif, sans serif, brush, and script.

Known throughout the world for its eclectic typeface collections and far-reaching creative exploits, from fonts and fashion to ceramics and space technology, House Industries has been a standard bearer for American graphic design for more than twenty-five years. The House Industries Lettering Manual is an accessible hands-on guide to drawing letters from Ken Barber, House’s head letterer and type design director.

Modeled after a series of sold-out lettering workshops that Ken has conducted around the world, this highly illustrated handbook outlines the history of lettering, various methods and techniques, common letter styles, and best practices for getting paid for your work. This handy how-to guide also provides lettering models to help sharpen your drawing skills and offer departure points for further experimentation. Designed by House Industries and including copious examples, exercises, and opportunities to practice what you’ve learned, plus photographs of works-in-progress and finished projects, this instructive and visually engaging book will help you master the dynamic art of lettering, whether you’re a budding artist or an experienced designer.


Decorate Happy: Bold, Colorful Interiors by Anthony Baratta

The first solo book by celebrated interior designer Anthony Baratta, Decorate Happy showcases Baratta’s preppy-chic style in a pattern-filled guide to decorating with verve and style.

Anthony Baratta’s rooms are happy. Whether they are found in the country or the city, these maximalist rooms are designed to make you smile. In his first solo book, Anthony Baratta, whose work has graced more than fifty magazine covers and been celebrated in the Cooper-Hewitt, shares twelve of his most recent houses, all in their own way perfect examples of his classic high-color, high-pattern all-American style. Some nod to the historical importance of centuries past, like an eighteenth-century house in Colonial Williamsburg; some are nautical chic. Some are glorious pop art, with mod rooms and bright primary colors, while others are chicly rustic. Although all the houses are unique, their rooms share one consistent underpinning: joy.


Attainable Sustainable: The Lost Art of Self-Reliant Living by Kris Bordessa

Packed with delicious recipes, natural remedies, gardening tips, crafts, and more, this indispensable lifestyle reference from the popular blogger makes earth-friendly living fun.

Whether you live in a city, suburb, or the country, this essential guide for the backyard homesteader will help you achieve a homespun life–from starting your own garden and pickling the food you grow to pressing wildflowers, baking sourdough loaves, quilting, raising chickens, and creating your own natural cleaning supplies. In these richly illustrated pages, sustainability-guru Kris Bordessa offers DIY lovers an indispensable home reference for sustainability in the 21st century, with tried-and-true advice, 50 enticing recipes, and step-by-step directions for creating easy, cost-efficient projects that will bring out your inner pioneer. Filled with 340 color photographs, this relatable, comprehensive book contains time honored-wisdom and modern know-how for getting back to basics in a beautiful, accessible package.


 

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