the beautiful crafts book

The Beautiful Crafts Book

Sterling Publishing Company (New York) 1976

You can tell from the contents page (if you hadn't already worked it out from the cover and title!) that this book is going to be pretty special.

These are just a few of the examples of painted glass. Most of the projects in this book are painting related. That's a bit of a shame for me as painting is not one of my skills, many though my skills may be ;) I can still appreciate the ideas though and live in hope that my brush skills may improve with age and experience.

I want this bird table so much. The flowers really remind me of... something (any ideas?) and the roof is a beautiful colour and the bird looks like a fish. Awesome! Plus this garden looks nice and warm. I'm stubbornly refusing to put on the heating just yet and am fairly frozen today, despite the hot water bottle I carry around with me everywhere. I'm considering making a macrame neck strap for it. I'm sure I must have a pattern for a macrame hot water bottle neck strap in one of these books...

How incredible is this puppet?! I could see it making an appearance in the Clangers or something.

Here's a set of dominos made to fit inside a matchbox. Matchboxes and dominos feature heavily in my life these days, so of course I had to include this. We went charity shopping yesterday and found a huge array of domino trophies and medals and a really nice set of dominos. I was tempted to buy them (I get terrible pangs for obvious collections and always want to keep them together) but left them for a bona fide domino player. Hopefully.

Easter eggs, just one of many, many, many decoration ideas. I'm aghast at these eggs. In a good way. I'd go so far as to say that I'm flabbergasted by them. Yes, I am agog.

These are examples of painting on fabric and I love them! Well, I probably don't love the lampshade actually, but the lamp as a whole is good. The notebook with the pram is definite love though.

Painted napkin rings. Lovely. If you like these, I am sure you will love Ellen aka The Night Owl. Unfortunately her shop is closed for a holiday, but check back because she paints the cutest wooden items.

My painted stones have never turned out anything like this. I would like to get back into stone painting though... I have great crafty plans for 2011. I should add stone painting to the list.

I actually want these tea towels for my kitchen, the one on the left especially. They're made using stencils and fabric paints.

Here's some wall art. My own wall art is languishing in a darkened room unfortunately as our new shelves have stolen its spot. I'm determined to find a new location for it though. I am still very proud of it, even after all these years... It was one of the first things I ever blogged about. Look!

Wooden birds in a tree, made from scratch and not just painted.

And finally, wooden boxes painted to be super pretty. Hooray for The Beautiful Crafts Book!

Sorry for that rather whistle-stop tour of such a good book, but I have to get up for work in just over six hours. Ugh. Still kind of looking for my blog mojo, but am hoping I'll find it when I have a week off work (soon!) and then normal blogging service will resume.