If this blog post were a library book, I’d be liable to pay some hefty long overdue fines!
Last month, as part of a pact my business partner & pal, Clare Nicolson made to ‘get out and about more’, we hosted a pop-up library event feature at one of London’s biggest indie shopping shindigs – The BUST Craftacular.
The project unravelled, just as some of the best ones often do, kind of by accident. A fleeting idea developed into a Proper Idea and with a little help from our crafty pals in London Town, the library was soon fully stocked with the best craft titles of 2011 AND we managed to recruit a gaggle of amazing authors to take part.
Clare is the design whizz of our little Made in the Shade duo and boy, oh boy, did she bring my geekfest library dreams to life! Never short of a great idea, Clare’s also pretty amazing when it comes to interpreting my own gobbledigook visions and madcap design notions. Everything from our library cards (actually discount cards for our online shop) to our book plate receipts (date stamped – of course!) and pretty book bags, librarian badges, banners and signage turned out just as I’d hoped.
To have Jazz Domino Holly, Tatty Devine, The Craftivist Collective and Cicada Books all involved in our little library was quite something. I was proud to place my copies of The Busy Girl’s Guide To Sewing alongside some of the best craft titles of 2011. Pretty neat, y’know, if I may say so myself.
I shall, for the moment, spare you the usual chat about the Megabus journey – but if you happened upon my Carrie Not The Kind Of Girl You’d Marry Facebook page during the trip, you’ll have been treated to some mental commentary from a sleep deprived eejit about some mental, equally sleep deprived eejit co-passengers.
I thought you might like to see some of the brilliant photographs Beardy took on the day…
I’ve been feeling a little bit sad lately. Well, more angry than sad – probably. Sad. Mad. Angry. All of those things. Oh – and drunk. I’ve been drunk too. Every day, I experience this weird feeling that some jackass is toying with my calendar and that my days and weeks are speeding up – like there’s a little switch you flick to make stuff go faster and it’s been nudged up a gear by accident. Like on a record player. (According to my on-screen tv guide doodah, there is a programme showing right now on Channel 4 called, ‘Living With The Amish’. Whit?!). For the rest of this blog, you can imagine my voice speaking to you at 45rpm when I should clearly be set to 33rpm.
Not two days ago, I posted a ‘lil rundown of Beardy and I’s last trip to London Town. No. Wait. I posted THAT story about three weeks ago! THREE WEEKS?! Mind I haven’t even published a moaned about Halloween yet! Or Bonfire Night. Hardly seems worth it now, does it?
So. Here we are at the tail end of November and for the umpteenth time this year, Beardy and I are getting set to reboard the Megabus and head south again to London. This time, we’re heading to Bethnal Green for the BUST Craftacular. In my Made in the Shade guise, I’m joining Clare onstage to play some of our favourite Christmas songs as The A’Maisonettes. We never describe ourselves as ‘djs’. We are not djs. Djs aren’t scared of cd mixers and most can negotiate two turntables and the contents of a record box all at once. We are – and we can’t. Instead, we hunt out supercool songs and just play them to people. The only skills required? Finding them (eagle-eyes), learning the words to ‘em (good memory/singing in tune) and then putting them in a funny order so that they tell some sort of story (creative editing & narrative building – oh yes). I’m looking forward to The A’Maisonettes’ little session at BUST. Clare is planning to wear her Christmas dress and I will wear white woolly tights and an amazing Christmas jumper with kittens on it. I’ve borrowed it specially. I fully intend to do a little dance. A little wiggle. A little wiggle in my borrowed Christmas jumper.
Once the singing and dancing’s over with, I have a quick wardrobe change before taking up my position as Chief Librarian in the Made in the Shade pop-up library – a little event feature we’ve put together for BUST. Stand by for a torrent of photographs and much gushing about meeting Craftivist Collective, Tatty Devine & Jazz Domino Holly next week. An obvious reflection of my own state of mind I think, my author session is loosely based around an imaginary self-help group. Library goers will be encouraged to wear, ‘Hello, my name is…’ stickers. They’ll be offered a positive sewing dunce affirmation and we’ll share stories about not being very good at making stuff. I might have my guests eat donuts and drink horrible coffee to further enhance the experience.
At the minute though, I’m mostly getting upset by the thought of being in London for a grand total of 14 hours – but being on a bus for 20.
Oh. When I have time, I will tell you all about the following things:
(i) State of Craft – a great craft book edited by pal & BUST Craftacular organiser Victoria Woodcock, published by the lovely Ziggy (Cicada Books), photographed by Beardy and featuring stacks of craft friends and talented makers.
(ii) Behaving like a teenager, going to a proper rock’n'roll show and returning my gommy feet to the oh-so-comfy Dr. Marten fold.
For now, I must save up some snoozes. It seems unlikely I’ll be enjoying any proper ones for a while!
My mum says my sister could sing before she could speak. I wrote things down before I could spell. Both my sisters are much older than me. One is 9 years older. The other, 12 years older. To save throwing them away, my mum would hand me down their used up school jotters and partially filled notebooks (paper fetish starts here, my friends). Not only did I love just ‘having’ the stack of books, but one of my very favourite hobbies was ‘writing French’. I wasn’t really writing French, of course. What I was doing, in actual fact, was tracing my sisters’ fancy joined up handwriting. They wrote in pencil, you see – so I wrote over their swoops and curls and swirly bits in biro and pretended I’d come up jotters worth of wordy materpieces all on my own. Joined up handwriting = French. Obviously. Just thinking about how much I enjoyed doing that is making me tear up just a little bit. The mood I’m in, I have to wonder what the adult equivalent of ‘writing French’ is. Anyone?
A few years later (when I could join up my own writing for real), I developed a teensy obsession with the movie, Dirty Dancing. I wasn’t allowed to watch Dirty Dancing when it first came out – I think mainly on account of the raunchy title, because, let’s be honest, the movie is hardly hardcore now, is it? Though, I guess it might look that way to a cautious parent judging only by the promo poster imagery. Anyway, I was the last of my friends to see Dirty Dancing. I was usually the last of my friends to do most fun things. I was, however, the first of my friends to learn to write my own name, to count to 20, to learn my multiplication tables, to know what the longest word in the dictionary was, to be able to say ‘yes’, ‘hello’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’ in Spanish, to be able to get a nice noise from my recorder and to know what the word ‘picturesque’ meant AND know how to spell it. Anyway, as lovely as all these things might be, they didn’t make up for the fact I hadn’t seen Dirty Dancing and so the girls in my class took the piss out of me. That was, until, my caravan friend Pamela invited me round to her place to watch it while her mum was out.
Hooked. I was so hooked infact, that having watched the film over and over and over again, I spent several weeks (though fewer than you might think), transcribing the entire script of the movie onto crisp white sheets of typewriter paper. Once complete, I drew my own electric pink Dirty Dancing logo on a makeshift cover, pegged the whole lot together with a giant novelty peg and displayed it lovingly on my bedknob. I tried to do the same with the Top Gun script but I don’t think I made it to the end… I’m not sure.
When I was a teenager I became obsessed with those ads in magazines for scam writing courses – though, I didn’t understand that they were scams and instead thought my parents just didn’t love me enough to nurture my early literary stirrings. Nonsense, of course. My family did all they could to grow my wee creative self, and ultimately did a fine job. As far as the mail order writing course went, they simply did not care to fritter away hundreds of pounds on a load of hooey issued by some moron sliming around on the bottom rung of a pyramid scheme. That said, I unwittingly engaged with a publishing pyramid scam all of my own. I saw an ad in The Sunday Post (I know… THE SUNDAY POST?!) calling for entries to a UK wide poetry contest. The winner was promised loads of money and a publishing deal. I duly sent my entry. I can’t remember exactly what the poem was about now, but I do vaguely remember the mention of porceline something or others smashing in my skull? Or was it my skull that was supposed to be porceline? I do not know. Probably best I don’t. Anyway, low and behold, I received a reply from the contest committee. I received a little note from the competition jury man telling me that although I hadn’t won the bag of money or the publishing deal, my poem had been shortlisted to be printed in a giant compendium of all the best competition entries. And – AND… I could see my work published IN the compendium if I sent them a cheque for £49.99. I was thrilled. No. Really, I was. Absolutely over the blinkin’ moon. I was just so disappointed that I would never save up enough pocket money to buy the book. Oddly, I didn’t tell my parents that I’d entered the contest and I definitely didn’t tell them about the letter I got through the post. Gullible? Moi?
When I wasn’t imagining myself as a supercool music journalist, I was scribbling angsty stuff in my diaries. Oh – hold on, stop the press. I’ve just remembered something a little bit funny that should have been included further up the page, chronologically just after the writing French hobby chat. Someone gave me this really brilliant little diary. It smelled old. It had a hard cover – one of those sort of padded, quilty ones. It had beautifully smooth, smoooooooth, cold pages with blue lines on. It had a little pop lock on the side. This journal had to be used for something very important. Something secret. Top. Secret. During one school holiday (at the caravan again), I decided to log every single person I knew in the book. I colour coded them with felt pen dots to demarcate what my relationship was with them and then I graded each person on a scale of 1 – 10 depending on how much I liked them. That is a TRUE STORY, my friends. And I cannot tell you enough how much I wish I still had that little journal. Thing is, not only is it a weird, weird thing to do, but I’m almost certain I did actually log every single person I knew in there. Every last one. Even the doctor was in there. And all my mum’s and dad’s friends. And all my sisters’ friends. Yet another childhood gem of a project that might need revisiting!
So. Yes. Where was I – before that crazy little snippet popped up? Oh yes. Supercool music journalist > diaries. I kept a journal of sorts (I think inspired by the likes of Anne of Green Gables first and then TV characters like Blossom) on and off during primary school then more religiously during high school. I wrote little bits and pieces after high school but once I’d discovered alcopops and the indie disco, my scribbling waned a little. I’d write in my books SO much that every Christmas my mum would buy me a giant stack of hardback jotters, knowing I’d soon fill ‘em on up. One year, I also received a set of coloured biro pens from Santa. I was thrilled. Writing things down had never been such colourful fun! I stored my book collection in Doc Marten boxes for years until one sad day I took a bonkers turn. I read my books one last time then whammed them in a black bag and binned the lot. More than a decade’s worth of ramblings silly and serious – gone. Not a week goes by that I don’t feel a teensy bit vomitty at the thought.
I knew I’d never really be a supercool music journalist. I knew because, as horrible as it was to admit it, I was rubbish at it. I’m not a good enough writer to describe something as amazing as music properly. I don’t know enough words. Not enough adjectives – not nearly enough similies. That would never do. I also wasn’t really sure how I felt about music writing. I mean, I bought music magazines and I enjoyed reading them but I think I was mad keen on interviews and mad bored by reviews. Nah. Despite harbouring a teen desire to wear cool clothes while hanging out in cool clubs and venues, my career as a music journo was nipped in the proverbial bud when I tried to write a review of an early Biffy Clyro gig for a student paper in 1996. “Biffy Clyro were quite good though they sounded a bit like a Nirvana cover band. I guess they were quite cute” was pretty much all I could come up with. I did not submit my article.
Writing after that became mostly an academic pursuit and no one besides tutors, lecturers and the odd conference delegate came to read the things I spent all my days writing. Jump ahead a couple of years, and inbetween writing band biogs for muso pals and penning pretend magazine articles that never saw the light of day, I took charge of all the words related to Made in the Shade. Huzzah!
Why am I rambling on about all of this? Well. I am rambling through my weird writing journey for one very specific reason. After years daydreaming about it, I am officially a published author. I wrote an actual book. ‘Tis true! Someone (a very lovely and super cool someone at that) referred to me as ‘an authoress’ yesterday and boy, did I like it! Yep. My book – the one I wrote about learning to sew, is gracing bookshelves and online shopping pages all over the UK and the US right now. Pretty exciting, eh? I am excited. I am probably most excited about getting to work on book number 2.
BOOK NUMBER 2: IDEAS
1. The Joy of Green – a book about how the colour green is the best of all the colours
2. The Carpet Chronicles – a book documenting bare-foot experiences across the globe
3. Big Mouthed Belters – a book about how much I dislike certain contemporary female singers
4. Carrie’s Guide to Lounge Wear – I put the world’s comfiest clothes to the ultimate couch test
5. Carrie Ate All The Pies – I eat pies. Beardy photographs me eating pies. I grow 3 dress sizes then release an accompanying fitness title (and maybe a DVD)
I think I have this writing thing all sewn up. A new career beckons. I’m sure you’ll agree. With gems like these in the ol’ noggin, how can I fail?
I had such a fun day yesterday. My friend coaxed me outside. I ate lunch in an Italian restaurant I’d never been to before. I enjoyed some time in the sunshine sipping cider. I drank a mediocre cocktail in a posh bar (tastiness may have been compromised but fun was not). I attended a swanky opening party and felt, momentarily, like a cool cat despite my ill-fitting clothes. I hung out in a Mexican fast food joint and sang Living La Vida Loca. I went to my favourite bar. I watched tv and fell asleep. My cat did not stomp on my head. Good. Times.
Given that I had such a sociable, giggly time, you’d think I’d wake up bright and chipper today. Nope. I’ve had the biggest grump on since 8.06am. I have no legitimate reason to have my angry bear cub face on, but I can’t seem to unfurrow my brow. Even a wee saunter out west in the sun followed by monster burgerfest at Stravaigin with Beardy’s family couldn’t perk me up for long.
I’ve been safely cocooned at home for hours now. Wrapped up in Beardy’s big huge brown icelandic cardigan, I settled down in the big green reading chair to flick through one of the swank mags I bought from GmbH. It was hard to choose which title to start with from the beautiful bundle of mags on my shelf. Since I was utterly intrigued by the ‘user-generated’ concept mentioned in the title tagline, I plumped for small but mighty fashion magazine, ilikemystyle.
Things in ilikemystyle that excited me (even though I was In A Mood)
Users discuss their love/hate relationship with real fur. The general consensus in the mag being that hand-me-down or vintage fur is a-ok (and actually that it is wasteful and really rather a shame to stow it away, unused and unappreciated). I would tend to agree.
The photographer takes the images and her friend uses them like a story board and they become the basis of a short film. Neat. I've been thinking lately that it's about time we brought back photostories. You know, a la Jackie magazine. Beardy and I are on the case. Look out for calls for extras and models for stories coming soon! No joke.
As someone who doesn't know the first thing about fashion, I'd never heard of Luis Venegas before. However, on reading this pretty lengthy interview, I think I'd like to know more - about him and about the magazines he's created. I like that he loves Dynasty. I love Dynasty too. I am jealous he has a boxset.
There's a section in the mag called Close Ups where, according to the intro blurb, visual arts experts offer some commentary on photos from the ilikestyle site. Though thrilled to find this sort of analytical content in a fashion mag, I was a little bit disappointed in how the articles played out. Think I might try my hand at my own wee analysis?
Oooo! Oooooh... Wow! I've got lots of reasons to like this magazine, but one of the elements that made me whoop aloud, was this. This section is called 'Words' and it's made up of a collection of fashion related essays and articles. This is exciting, yes? Well. It gets better. This bit of the magazine is printed on old school newsprint! Eeeeep! :)
I was delighted to happen upon this feature called 'Mood Boards' - not least because I love to snoop at pics of other people's homes and workspaces, but because I LOVE picture collage. So much so, infact, that I've been inspired to write about it in my next post!
I’ve not managed to read every single little bit of ilikemystyle yet but what I have read, I’ve enjoyed and been inspired by. I wasn’t sure about the ‘user-generated’ thing at first – mainly because I’m a bit of a stickler for internal consistency and am always wary about managing the quality control issue in projects like these. I like to know where I am with a mag. But, you know what? With over 80 contributors from all over the world adding their tuppence worth via a purpose built social networking site, the result is refreshing, it’s exciting and even though standards do waver a little bit here and there, the concept is prrrrretty cool and something I’d like to learn more about. I’m off to join the ilikemystyle social network right now! My mission? To have Beardy’s photography work/my writing feature in its glorious teeny pages. Oh! Here! Look – my face has straightend out :) It only took 13 hours…
I’ve been a magazine obsessive since I was little. It started with sticker albums, wordsearch booklets and the odd shopping catalogue. I was the only person in my household interested in Betterware. I then progressed to spin-off publications linked to my favourite tv shows. Finger Mouse. Going Live! I dreamed of subscriptions to mags that came with their own binder and series of ‘free’ gifts. I never ever got one. I managed to convince my mother, even though still at primary school, to let me read Jackie, insisting it was definitely for LITTLE, little girls. Not one to have the wool pulled over her eyes, my mother would be sure to secretly scan the pages before I got to them, censoring anything she deemed inppropriate with a black magic marker pen. I remember one time, when I’d sneakily spent my pocket money on my first issue of Just17 (at the ripe old age of… 12?) she censored the problem page, blacking out the word ‘penis’. The pages were glossy and the print kind of raised off the page. I could still read it.
I bought Jackie and Just17 religiously throughout my teens before moving onto the likes of Mizz and More. I thought I was very grown up when I read my first Company and I was certainly a woman of the world by the time I ripped open the cellophane of my first Cosmopolitan. Of course, I had not actually kissed a boy yet, but holy moley, I was well equipped with tips and dos and donts and hots and nots should the opportunity arise. It became apparent from the plethora of ‘Dear Agony Aunt’ letters from geek girls like me that I wasn’t the only teen reader to be living some sort of romantic life vicariously through the pages of Just 17 and its like. The ‘Dear Agony Aunt’ pages were always the best bits, let’s face it.
I kept every single magazine in a big stack beside my bed and when the stack got too big to stay tidily upright, I stored them in stacking boxes instead. When the magazine boxes started to take over my bedroom, I had to make a cull. I scoured each and every issue I’d collected, ripping out pages I wanted to keep. I painstakingly catalogued them according to topic – beauty, boys, fashion, beauty, boys, fashion – punched holes in them with my red metal holepunch and stored them carefully in a big giant ring binder. By the time I saw fit to part with my big giant ringbinder of teen girl fodder (I regret this moment every darned day), I’d already accumulated a tonne of music magazines – from Smash Hits to Select to NME and Q. A whole new tower of magazine boxes had been building under my windowsill.
Recently, I parted with two boxes of Q magazine but I continue to hoard (and grow) two baskets of BUST, Milkcow, Venus, Selvedge, The Chap and Oh Comely. Some people tend to plants and vegetable patches. I cultivate my magazine collection.
One time, about 11 years ago now I guess, I spotted an advert in the job pages of The Herald. I can’t remember the exact publication now, but Teen Mag X (let’s call it that – though already I’m regretting calling it that as the ‘X’ makes the whole thing sound much less wholesome and a lot more naughty – or wrong – than I’d intended) were looking to recruit a junior journalist. I wrote a covering letter to beat all covering letters and posted it off to Teen Mag X. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to write a letter like it since - though I’m hoping I might muster the same ‘I REALLY WANT THIS JOB ooomph’ again soon. Much to my utter delight, I was invited to attend an interview in Dundee. Or was it Aberdeen? I think my parents may have worried that this writing lark was a silly flight of fancy and that I was pursuing the opportunity for mixed up reasons. I didn’t travel north to meet the publishers. I missed the interview. If I merely regret the moment I decided to part with my giant ring binder of clippings, then thinking back on this episode makes me feel nauseous. I don’t suppose I really wanted to live in Dundee. Or Aberdeen. But, gee whizz… I wonder what might have come of Carrie Not The Kind Of Girl You’d Marry had I taken the teen mag road less travelled. Maybe it’s not too late! “Dear Aunty Carrie. My boyfriend wants me to touch his penis. What should I do?” I could totally be Aunty Carrie.
Yes. Aherm. I have a new addition to my magazine library. Hot on the heels of my last ‘new favourite thing’, Oh Comely (more about this later, no doubt), comes Frankie. A super cool, beautifully designed, wonderfully written, marvellously edited and generally overwhelmingly swoony excuse for a magazine, Frankie comes all the way from our creative pals in Australia. With the tagline, “Do. Make. Look. Listen. Say. Think”, Frankie has just about everything fabulous wrapped up perfectly in a nice neat papery package. Though it doesn’t appear to have a problem page.
My mother-in-law, Pauline, ‘overheard’ my Frankie fan talk on Facebook. Less interested in what the mag was but more interested in how it could possibly elicit in me the behaviour of a big fat coo-ing homing pigeon, she gifted me a subscription. Oh how I whooped! I whooped with a whole lotta welly – right from the bottom of my tummy! I returned from London yesterday to find my first installment lying on the hall floor. I knew exactly what it was from the Morrison Media sticker on the front of the envelope but I didn’t open it right away. I waited til this morning to tear open the paper package in a mini Frankie Opening Ceremony. With a cup of tea and a comfy seat at the kitchen table, I summoned Beardy to witness the big reveal. As I slid the smooth, weighty issue from the envelope, we both made this noise: “Oooooh…”
Pauline, this is one of my favourite gifts of… ever. Thank you. x
"Ooooh..."
Painter Lisa Pugley is featured on p127 of Issue 42. I like to think this painting is me sitting beside my sisters, Lisa & Marie.
Iona Bruce is one of those people, one of those super enthusiastic people whose passion rubs off on you after just a moment or two in her company. She’s fun and vibrant and warm, never overbearing and always poised to develop her next creative idea. Quite how she does it, I’m not sure, but Iona has a fabulous knack of keeping clusters of projects going good guns while launching new ones and baking ideas from her brainbox oven before serving them up to the world! Under the I Heart… moniker, Iona manages tonnes of micro projects all designed to engage people and grow her little online (and real life) DIY lovin’ eco-craft community.
One of her latest projects (and I think one of my favourites so far) is monthly zine, Heart & Lungs. I was flippin’ thrilled to be invited to write a little something for the first issue. I’m only sorry that, due to the aforementioned onset of blog fatigue, my offering was a garble of beardy, bear-y chitter chatter rather than the carefully considered, crazily funny, intelligent and witty little piece I had imagined in my head… :/
Heart & Lungs is beautifully put together with obvious love and care. Crammed full of wonderful illustration, cute how-to projects, topical articles, creative events listings, interviews and fun snippets of crafty, artsy fun, I LOVE it. Got a feeling y’all will too.
To buy your own copy, click over here. Heart & Lungs doesn’t have a pricetag. Iona would like you to pay for it what you think it’s worth. It’s definitely worth investing in.
I’m not ashamed to admit it. I do judge a book by its cover. I’m pretty sure most of us do. At least a little bit.
To bite one of my favourite Clare Nicolson phrases of all time, I come over all ‘Jessie Judgemental’ when it comes to choosing books – craft & lifestyle titles in particular. Heck! My coffee table, if indeed I had one, would positively buckle under the strain of craft, interiors, fashion and design books that live in my house. I am a self-confessed sucker when it comes to a gorgeous cover, a beautifully designed sleeve, pretty photography… a quality paper choice…, an unusual finish, an interesting binding or quirky spine. I can’t help but fall for the papery charm. But, I’ve found, a bit like seeing a fashion designer rocking up to Fashion Week sporting a teal velour tracksuit and a pair of Crocs without so much as a smidgeon of irony (like that would ever happen), my toes bunch like nobody’s business when I search through the standard offering of craft books.
Why, oh why, does it appear that the majority of mainstream craft titles are forever destined to be the Croc-wearing style faux pas of the book shelf? I don’t doubt that the content of the books is wonderful in some cases – horrid cover or no horrid cover – but to my mind, I want my lifestyle book to woo and excite me from the first moment we meet across the ‘recommended’ aisle. Why disguise an otherwise great little read in an offputting sleeve?
Now, I could chatter all the live long day about my favourite book covers and more importantly, about my favourite crafty books and crafty writers and why I love them, but at the minute this is a topic that’s hot, hot, hot in the Maclennan household for more substantial reasons.
One of my very favourite craft books - Meet Me At Mike's. It feels more like a special 'file' than a normal book. It's designed beautifully - outside and in.
Yum. Nothing scrummier than a bit of concealed spiral binding! Couple that with a beautiful integrated pattern envelope and some pretty backing papers and you have yourself a craft book droolfest!
This summer, my very first craft book will be published. Soon – there it’ll be… On Amazon. It’ll be sitting alongside all the other titles for the book buying, web shopping world to see. The cover of my book hasn’t been finalised by my publisher yet. I wish I was allowed to show you drafts – but I’m not. Soon! Soon I’ll be able to give sneaky peeks. I have limited (if any) say in this bit of the process since the important decisions about sales and marketing (and what the book looks like on the outside) are undertaken by dedicated specialist teams. Of course, as a complete control freaker (no point denying it), I don’t have to tell you that this lack of steering power is driving me just a ‘lil bit loopyloo. All I can do now is hope and pray that these specialist teams are equally well equipped and talented in research, design, typography and semiotics as they are in trend forecasts and sales strategy. My book cover is in their hands… Wish me luck!
This evening, I conducted a little bit of research of my own. Working on the principle that we do judge a book by its cover, at least at the very beginning of our (potential) relationship with it, I settled down to scour the first 30 pages of search results on Amazon, picking out books based on my attraction to the cover alone.
1.
I searched for ‘craft books’ in the ‘lil Amazon books search box.
Out of 360 titles, I selected just 8 to inspect more closely based on an initial judgement of the cover design. Here are the covers that enticed me when I spotted their thumbnails on the Amazon listings…
Phase 2.
I searched specifically for sewing books (my book is about sewing you see) and did the same… I didn’t include the same books I’d already chosen in phase 1. Again, weirdly, just 8 titles of 360 engaged me enough to want to know more about the content of the book.
So there we have it. A sad and rather sorry tale. Following an entire evening of web trawling, out of 720 covers, only 16 caught my eye enough to make me give a hoot about the content inside. Now that, my friends, is a depressing little sum and doesn’t bode well for my little offering. So - I need your help. Since I can’t rely on my own eyes alone, I’d like you to share your favourite craft/lifestyle book covers with me. If you wanted to – you could even try the Amazon experiment (maybe scaled down a little bit!). Let me know what you think about my selections – share your craft book buying experiences.
