Smocking made simple! 20 stitch patterns to create next-level cosplay Learn the art of smocking from award-winning costume designer Maggie Hofmann! With step-by-step instructions for 20 American and English smocking techniques, cosplayers can incorporate 3D textures, historical accents, and special effects like fish scales in their designs. Pre-smocked fabric is expensive, but now you can make your own stylish panels for every event. Smocking Secrets will give you the perfect jumping-off point to invent your own fancy flourishes! Take your costumes to the next level with the book’s companion product, smocking stencils in three gridded sizes. Add rich texture, 3D effects, and historical flair to your costumes with smocking Award-winning cosplayer Maggie Hofmann helps you achieve unique visual effects for theater-ready looks Pre-smocked fabric is expensive! Save money by making your own

Adventurous sewers have embraced the style again, experimenting with new methods and materials and inventing fresh effects. Exciting original designs all appear in color photos. “A showcase of smocking combined with decorative stitches and embroidery...filled with beautiful projects....Very good diagrams and instructions on how to smock for the beginner.”—Doll Crafter

Craft.

How-to book with instructions full of illustrations on forming smocked figures using stacked cables to embellish garments and more.

“Smocking has been revived as the interest in hand-decorated surfaces increases...Page after page of patterns...each with color graph photograph of finished design, and written directions... include(s) pointers on fabrics, stitch instructions, and symbols....Patterns reflect popular favorites, holidays, and ease of implementation. Easter becomes an egg; animals include domestic and wild; and fruits, vegetables, toys, and people showcase familiar objects—apples, hyacinths, bicycles, and more.”—Booklist.

Expand your costume-making skills and go from beginner to confident maker! Picking up where Creative Cosplay left off, this new volume prepares costume enthusiasts to create out-of-this-world effects from head to toe! Cosplayers of all experience levels have much to gain from Amanda’s expertise as a national cosplay competition winner and judge. Learn the basics of making an original costume pattern, using prosthetics and latex, and customizing fabric through dyeing and painting. Transform yourself into the character of your choice with Special Effects (SFX) makeup. SFX makeup uses prosthetics and smaller on-skin materials to create illusions — such as wounds, scars, deformities, or supernatural features — directly on the skin. Get the scoop on sergers, embroidery machines, and using a digital cutter Pick up industry secrets on the basics of LED work, body painting, and SFX makeup Create a DIY costume repair kit for conventions, and market yourself in the cosplay world

Foremost smocking designer provides complete instructions on how to smock. Over 10 projects, over 100 illus.

Two dozen patterns to enhance clothing, pillows, purses, and other special items. All designs shown in color on covers.

Eight stunning stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “a true master of the form” (Salman Rushdie). “Open Secrets is a book that dazzles with its faith in language and in life.”—The New York Times Book Review In these eight tales, Alice Munro reveals entire lives with a sureness that is nothing less than breathtaking, capturing those moments in which people shrug off old truths, old selves, and what they only thought was fate. In Open Secrets, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly rekindled. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman’s romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and a lover in present-day Canada. The resulting volume resonates with sorrow, humor, and wisdom, and confirms Alice Munro’s reputation as one of the most gifted writers of our time.

The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?