Garden crafts can be used to create many useful and decorative items for the home. In addition, these can be used as garden gifts. Here are reviews of some excellent craft books with delightful garden craft projects.


The Complete Photo Guide to Ribbon Crafts

By Elaine Schmidt, this was released by Creative Publishing International. With over 700 large format color photos, this is the definitive guide to crafting with ribbon.

This guide features a chapter on each technique. It has all sorts of projects, motifs, tips, and ideas that will appeal to gardeners. There is an in-depth chapter on crafting and embroidering flowers and foliage. This covers many types of sew and no-sew methods, such as knitting, weaving, patchwork, braiding, pleating, and folding.

If you’ve very wanted to create perfect bows for decorating gardening gifts, this is your chance. With over 20 kinds of bows, it shows beautiful garden-related bow projects and ideas, such as wreaths and garlands, flowers, and floral arrangements.

This has all sorts of ribbon projects and ideas for ribbon crafts,
including items for the home as well as clothing, jewelry, and personal items.

For each technique and project, this has a list of the supplies and tools along with color illustrated, step by step directions.

The introduction presents the history of ribbon. The first chapter explores the different kinds of ribbon along with the tools and supplies of ribbon crafting.



Nature Inspired

By Tracie Lyn Huskamp, this title was released by Quarry Books. This features over a dozen mixed media techniques that can be used for various items, such as journals, nature displays, and shadow boxes.

Learn how to create beautiful artful displays using the rich bounty of nature. One chapter is devoted to collecting the natural materials. For each technique or project, this has easy to follow, color illustrated, step by step instructions. Gardeners will especially love the leaf rubbing and flower pounding projects.

Readers can learn how to create a gorgeous four seasons journal using gathered natural objects. This explains how to collect, press, and dry flowers and foliage. The projects feature all sorts of nature and gardening motifs, such as birds, butterflies, flowers, and dragonflies.

Each chapter has a design gallery with inspiring items made using the featured technique. Some of the gallery items feature specific months or seasons of the year. The techniques include sketching, photography, and nature printing. The author also shows how to paint garden and nature scenes on different fabrics, such as muslin.

For disclosure purposes I received review copies of these books from the publishers.