Craftside

Make art with your fall leaves from the book Land Art in Town: Simple Inspiration Through the Seasons

I spent my childhood raking leaves, oh and jumping in them! I never thought about making art with them until I saw this page of a scalloped line made of fall leaves featured in Land Art in Town: Simple Inspiration Through the Seasons.

I will definitely be trying this as soon as the leaves start to turn here in SoCal. Hey, if you try it send a picture or post it on Facebook. I would love to see!

More about the Frances Lincoln book:

Land Art in Town: Simple Inspiration Through the Seasons

by Marc Pouyet

In town, it is sometimes hard to remember that the natural world is all around us. Here are over one hundred simple, playful, inspiring pieces of land art made with easily found natural materials, in a city setting. For anyone who wants to step outside the urban whirl for a moment of creativity, for families and for educators, Land Art in Town is a rich source of inspiration, a reminder that beneath the concrete, there is the beach.

Marc Pouyet trained as a graphic designer at the Corvisart School of Graphic Arts in Paris. He has worked as a graphic artist and children's illustrator, and artistic director at the children's publishers Nathan and Ravensburger. As well as producing land art and sculptures using natural materials, he runs workshops in schools and community centers for children and adults. He lives in Saint-Maurice-pres-Crocq, France. His first book Natural: Simple Land Art through the Seasons is also published by Frances Lincoln.

Mucha Brooklyn Exhibition poster from the Francis Lincoln book Mucha

Today, I wanted to share with you a bit of eye candy from the book Mucha. This was a poster designed for the Brooklyn Exhibition 1912. The poster features a girl with Slav features. She holds a circlet of thorns as a symbol of the past and future of the Slavs.

More about the Frances Lincoln book:

Mucha

by Sarah Mucha

Generally agreed to be one of the most important contributors to Art Nouveau, the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha was trained, celebrated and lived most of his life in Paris. His unforgettably iconic images of Sarah Bernhardt and others embody the spirit of the fin de siècle. But underneath his successful career as an artist and poster designer lay a passionate Slav nationalist whose most important and long neglected works are still being painstakingly restored and exhibited in the Czech republic. This book is the first comprehensive overview of his life and work and is published in association with the Mucha Museum in Prague.

And for more eye-candy check out this video that features Traci Bunkers, author of The Art Journal Workshop: Break Through, Explore, and Make it Your Own, studio.

 

 

 

Pretty cool, hu?

Body Mind Beauty Health

The top 10 nutritional mistakes active people make.

Quarry SPOON

How to sprout leafy greens in a mason jar 

Rock Paper Ink

Dominography, Domino Typography video

Motorbooks

How to make automotive patch panels along body lines

ACreativeDream
June has a whole new batch of mail art completed and sent. Come see what she's done!

Win 1 of 15 Prize Packages from Card Maker Magazine! 
World Card Making Day is October 5. You may want to get a head start because there are BIG prizes and GOOD causes involved!

Mixed Media Artist
What do you do when the colors you've picked for your quilt are too bold or bright?

Glass Mushrooms
Cherie makes another round of glass garden mushrooms.

A Chimp Maybe
When you cannot find that perfect pattern, sometimes you have to improvise. 

 

Giveaway: Bodleian Libraries Desk Diary 2014 and a whole bunch of Craftside goodies

Today, I have a super fun and special Craftside Giveaway filled with all sorts of goodies along with a fun crafting tip/idea.

This prize pack includes:

1. Bodleian Libraries Desk Diary 2014
2. A Card Album
3. A Christi Friesen kit that includes all the goodies and directions to make a mixed-media heart.
4. A new Brave Intuitive Painting MakeReady Blank Journal.
5. A pack of Makeready wrapping paper
6. A randomly selected bulking dummy (a blank book the publishing industry uses to decide the size, shape and paper a book will be printed in.
7. And will include but not limited to stuff from my personal stash! Like yarn, quilt fabric, rubber stamps, glue,tape measures and who knows what else! It will be like Chistmas!

Enter here and answer the questions: "Have you ever belonged to a "something" of the month club?" What was that something and did you like it?

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

 Now onto a crafty tip:

I love the fact the Facebook and Pinterest are a wealth of quotes. This one popped up and it seemed perfect to write on one of the new Brave Intuitive Painting MakeReady Blank Journals.

I love writing my letters backward and changing the sizes and letterforms. Try it!

The quote is, "The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind."

-Caroline Myss

Oh, and I also keep a box of little things like cool graphics from packaging etc. That's where I went to find the little scissors, iron and spool images.

More about the Frances Lincoln desk diary:

Bodleian Libraries Desk Diary 2014

by Bodleian Libraries

This Bodleian Libraries Desk Diary 2014 is illustrated with images from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. This year's fashion theme includes images from advertisements and catalogues from between c.1900 to the late 1950s.

The diary is a week to view, has a ribbon marker and is illustrated in colour throughout.

Check out all of the

2014 Quayside Calendars

Perfect for Holiday Gift giving!

More about the Quarry book:

Brave Intuitive Painting-Let Go, Be Bold, Unfold! Techniques for Uncovering Your Own Unique Painting Style

by Flora S. Bowley

Adopt a spontaneous, bold, and fearless approach to painting as a process of discovery—one that results in lush and colorful finished works that will beg to be displayed. This inspiring and encouraging book for both novice and experienced painters shows how to create colorful, exciting, and expressive paintings through a variety of techniques, combining basic, practical painting principles with innovative personal self-expression.

Flora S. Bowley takes a fun and forgiving approach to painting, based on the notion that “You don't begin with a preconceived painting in mind; you allow the painting to unfold.” Illustrating how to work in layers, Flora gives you the freedom to cover up, re-start, wipe away, and change courses many times along the way. Unexpected and unique compositions, color combinations, and subject matter appear as you allow your paintings to emerge in an organic, unplanned way while working from a place of curiosity and letting go of fear. She lives and works full-time as a painter in Portland, Oregon, where she is inspired by magical forests, abundant gardens and a vibrant community of fellow artists. Visit her online at www.florasbowley.com.

    

How to make butterfly-topped cupcakes from the book Vintage Tea Party

Today's Tasty Friday is not only tasty, but clever and cute! These cupcakes featured in the book VIntage Tea Party are topped with a cut out piece of the cupcake center that forms a butterfly.

Click on this page from VIntage Tea Party to enlarge and read the full recipe for buttercream filled cupcakes and how to cut the top to form a butterfly.

More about the Frances Lincoln book:

VIntage Tea Party

by Carolyn Caldicott

Everyone loves a tea party. Mix-and-match crockery, bone-handled knives, lace and linen, sweet peas and roses, home baking and a slug of gin in the tea cup - they're all back in vogue. Indoors by the fire in winter or outside in sumemr sunshine, hosts and guests can relax together with none of the formality of a dinner party.

Carolyn Caldicott and her husband Chris own the World Food Café in London's Covent Garden, where they for twenty years they have been cooking and serving delicious vegetarian food from recipes collected on their travels. They are the authors of three vegetarian cookery books published by Frances Lincoln.

In VIntage Tea Party, Carolyn Caldicott shows readers how to recreate a world of nostalgic comfort, old-fashioned elegance and delicious treats. Try her recipes for cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sponge, rose petal jelly, strawberry and champagne jam, Earl Grey tea with gin and lemon, and much, much more.

    

How to make henna-style body paint with mud from The Wild Weather Book

Yes, we are all quite literally experiencing WILD WEATHER, so why not get a book named The Wild Weather Book: Loads of things to do outdoors in rain, wind and snow and try out all sorts of fun things to do outside like mud stencils, leaf patterns and my personal favorite henna-style body paint?

Click on these pages from The Wild Weather Book: Loads of things to do outdoors in rain, wind and snow to enlarge, and read how to mud paint, mud stencil and make mud tattoos.

More about the Frances Lincoln book:

The Wild Weather Book
Loads of things to do outdoors in rain, wind and snow

by Fiona Danks

It's raining outside - let's get out and play! Don't huddle cooped up indoors on a bad weather day: wrap up in warm clothes or waterproofs and get out of doors for some fun. In this book Jo Schofield and Fiona Danks offer myriad suggestions for wild things to do outdoors on wet, windy and snowy days, including:

- Rainy adventures (e.g. go swimming in the rain; test out your fire-making skills - can you make a fire in the rain?)
- Get creative (e.g. make a rain shadow; make an igloo; paint with natural paints made from wet mud, wet berries, wet charcoals)
- Play bad weather games (e.g. slip and slide; watermelon rugby; ice hockey)
- Experiment with weather (e.g. make a rain trap; make boats and float them on puddles; make a wind whirler out of a plastic bottle)
- Just have fun! (e.g. do a rain dance; make rain drums)

Fiona Danks did a degree in Ecology at Edinburgh University followed by a PGCE in Rural and Environmental Science at Bath College of Higher Education. She worked in environmental education for a number of years, first for the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and then for the Berkshire Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, organizing training for teachers and taking groups of children out to nature reserves and other wild sites. She then went on to write books about the Chiltern Hills and the Cotswold Hills while working part-time running activities in a pre-school nursery. She currently runs the Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment, a non-profit making company providing grants for a wide range of community and environmental projects across Oxfordshire. Fiona lives in Watlington in Oxfordshire. Through their website www.goingwild.net Jo and Fiona provide more ideas for outdoor activities and an opportunity for debate on the importance of real world adventures for all young people.