It’s winter vacation here which means I have three kids hanging around the house for two weeks. In our family, this means major crafting is taking place. A trip to the library yielded some great books to guide us and I wanted to share our favorites with you. My daughters are 9, 13, and 15 and these are books that we’ve all enjoyed equally. Some of these titles are fairly new, and others have been out for a while now.
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Here are four craft books I highly recommend:
How to Draw Cute Stuff: Draw Anything and Everything in the Cutest Style Ever by Angela Nguyen
This book is jam-packed with drawing tutorials that are super simple – each tutorial is just three steps – and create absolutely adorable drawings (see her style on her Instagram account here). Subject matter includes people (with various expressions, hats, clothes, and shoes), animals of all sorts, buildings, vehicles, food, and plants. Besides filling a sketchbook with drawings, you could do so many things with these drawings. Decorate envelopes to make your snail mail more fun, create greeting cards, or draw on your notebook or paper lunch bag. And, you could easily turn these drawings into embroidery patterns and adorn your jeans or jean jacket. For $12.95 this book is totally worth buying and would be a great gift along with a pack of colored pencils and a sketchbook.
Create This Book by Moriah Elizabeth
Moriah Elizabeth is a popular crafty YouTuber (her channel has 4 million subscribers) and this is her book of creative prompts. You write in, and on, this book, making it your own. Prompts include things like “create a page of stripes” and “draw a set of twins.” For all those moments when someone says, “I’m bored,” hand them this book and some colored pencils. (We bought this book since it’s something you write in.)
Florals by Hand: How to Draw and Design Modern Floral Projects and Alli Koch
I’ve long admired people who can take a Micron pen and just draw flowers, but I haven’t been able to do it myself until we got this book. See Alli’s style on her popular Instagram account to get a taste. This book provides step-by-step instructions for all sorts of flowers, plus floral frames and lettering projects. Once you learn to draw a particular flower it’s easy to use it in your own projects (and again, these could become great jumping-off points for embroidery). We also checked out Alli’s second book, Modern Florals, but found this first one to be more comprehensive.
Pop-Up Design and Paper Mechanics: How to Make Folding Paper Sculpture by Duncan Birmingham
I’ve always loved pop-ups and I’m definitely a three-dimensional thinker, so this book has been a real treat. Starting with the most basic (yet still magical!) design, Duncan Birmingham walks you through every sort of pop-up you’ve ever dreamed of creating. The way we’ve approached this book is to learn each technique, then turn it into our own creative project (the book doesn’t dictate what you do with the pop-ups, it shows you the underlying mechanics of how to make them). The open-ended nature of each chapter has made this book incredibly fun! Plus Birmingham has a YouTube channel where he shows you the same content that’s in the book. The video supplements are really great. I can’t recommend this book enough!