I love "Craft" books!

I love craft books- -they are so fun and inspiring when looking for a new project to begin, and just so much fun to browse through!  I wanted to share a few books from my collection of many!!

My brother, Gary, sent me two great books about buttons.  He was also instrumental in starting me down the journey of button collecting!  (I have a HUGE button collection I will have to share sometime).  Anyway, this first one is my favorite of the two:

I could look through this book for hours there are so many beautiful buttons in here. 

Here's two of my favorite pages:

I love buttons with rhinestones in them- -they are so pretty and I love pretty, sparkly things.  Whenever I get a new collection of buttons, one of the first things I do is go through them and pick out any with rhinestones and then I place them in a special trinket box my brother gave me.  Then when I'm looking for that perfect, sparkly button, I know just where to go find it!!

I thought you might enjoy seeing this page too, the shell buttons- -another favorite of mine!  I have lots of shell buttons and they have such a beautiful sheen to them and often the most amazing designs carved in them.  My all time favorite- -shell buttons with rhinestones!!  Very hard to come by!

This is the other book he gave me:

I love this book as it truly is what it says on the cover; "an encyclopedia of buttons," however it only has a few colored photos in it, which is why I love the other book more. . .the first one is full of colored photos of beautiful buttons!! But if you want to know the history and background of a certain type of button, then this is the book for you!!

Another thing I love about these books is that they are used- -purchased second hand and as much as I love bookstores, second-hand bookstores (or vintage, used, etc.) are my favorites.  There's just this feeling of history when you go into a second-hand store.  They all smell the same. . . the smell of the old pages and ink mixed together with a certain amount of book dust. I love that smell!  I always wonder who owned the book first, where they got it and why they chose to give it up.  Did they enjoy it as much as I do, or was it rarely handled--rarely read?  Crazy, but these are just the sort of thoughts that go through my head when I get a used book!

Okay, here's one more favorite:

My friend, Lisa, brought a copy of this book to work one day to share with us and I fell in love! But it's out of print so I had to do a real search to find my own copy.  After much searching I finally found this one, in good condition, for sale on ebay.  I was so excited!  This book is just full of inspiration for a craft-a-holic like myself!  As you can see from the cover, it contains information about several types of crafts.  My favorite sections are on embroidery, knitting and crocheting.  I love this book as it gives step-by-step instructions on completing the crafts so can be used to self-teach several techniques.  When I was first learning to crochet I found myself going to the page about the individual stitches so that I could understand what my pattern was calling for and see how to complete it correctly. (of course my own personal tutor: Laura over at http://www.lovethebluebird.blogspot.com/ is truly the most amazing lifesaver when it comes to learning how to crochet!) But this book has helped a lot as well.

 Here's one of the pages I truly love- -as motifs are one of my favorite things to crochet:

Don't you just love these?  I really think they are beautiful and want to try to make each one, especially the white flower on the bottom of the page- -so pretty!!

Well thank you for indulging me and allowing me to chat on and on about some of my favorite things.  I am now feeling the need to crochet. . . .