The decorative artwork of the 1920s and 1930s has been inspiration for many books.  Characterized by clean lines and geometric shapes, designs took form to reflect the architecture, fashion, and graphics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in the years leading up to World War I.

Search Press’s Elaine Hill has captured the spirit of the time in her book Art Deco Designs.  Featuring black and white reproducible images, the author and artist offers her drawings to anyone interested in using them in their own artwork and handicrafts.  Readers can choose designs that include dapper men and women, flowers, animals, and abstract squares, rectangles, and circles to use in their needlecraft, textile, ceramic, and embroidery work.

Hill, a regular contributor to the publisher’s Design Source Books, adds her own special touch to each drawing, which gives it depth and personality.  High society types are reflected by their choice in hairstyle, clothing, jewelry, vehicles, pets, and cocktails.  The author suggests drawing images on tracing paper and then transferring them to cloth, glass, ceramic, or wooden surfaces.  She also notes that images can be enlarged using a simple photocopier.

A great source of inspiration for creative types looking to give their friends and family members unique, handmade gifts this holiday season, Art Deco Designs is one of a number of pattern books available from Search Press.  Retailing in the US for $9.95, the title consists of over 30 pages of drawings which makes it a steal for crafty types.

Designs can be traced and etched into glass stemware for an elegant gift, or transferred and stitched onto a tea towel.  Printing the designs onto iron-on transfer paper gives a person a number of options.  T-shirts, pillowcases, and tote-bags can be embellished in minutes using plastic gemstones, fabric markers and paint, buttons, ribbons, and scraps of fabric.  Encouraging imaginations to go wild, Hill also offers her talent to the following titles:

• Victorian Designs
• Mythical Creatures
• Christmas Designs
• Halloween Designs
• Celtic Knotwork Designs

Not much of an artist in the way of drawing, I appreciate these types of books because they provide an endless source of material that can be used to create one-of-a-kind projects with little effort.  My copy will be used to scrapbook, create colorful note-cards, and screen-print shirts.