I’ve had a lot of positive feedback when sharing resources that I have personally found to be helpful in my journey to learn and improve be it arts, crafts, photography etc and so I thought I’d create a page of useful resources. Here you will find links to classes and books that I have really enjoyed and found helpful. Where possible, compensated affiliate links used.
BOOKS
Let’s start with books! First up and I have found the Print & Pattern to be truly inspiring and I was buzzing with ideas after reading it and still refer to it now when my mojo is on a hiatus. You can find that book at Amazon US and Amazon UK. You can see a few of the cards inspired by this book here, here and here.
I’m a huge fan of Jenna Rainey, @monvoirco on Instagram and love her watercolouring and was very excited to find her new book, Everyday Watercolour, Learn To Paint Watercolor In 30 Days. I’ve already started working my way through the book and am finding it a thorough look at how to watercolour starting with the basics and working up. You can find that book at Amazon US and Amazon UK.
Amazon recommended this book, How To Draw Modern Florals, when I was purchasing Everyday Watercolor and again I follow Alli Koch on Instagram I thought I’d give it a try as I’d still very much like to draw more myself. You can find that book at Amazon US and Amazon UK. As a result of this book I now have a sketchbook filled with floral line art and the tutorials included break down the steps to drawing the flowers into manageable bite-size chunks.
My most recent purchase is the 365 Days Of Art book. There is a little bit of everything included in the book, and the great thing is that each task is achievable in a short amount of time. Although I’ve not been following the book on a daily basis, I’ve completed several of the pages and really enjoyed the challenge. You can find that book at Amazon US and Amazon UK.
ARTS & CRAFTS CLASSES
Now it goes without saying that if you want to find quality arts and crafts classes in our industry then Online Card Classes is the place to start. I started out with Online Card Classes as a student but was invited to be a guest teacher for the classes. I particularly recommend you check out the watercolour classes which cater perfectly to card makers but take the technique right from basics to an intermediate level. You can find those classes here, here and here.
My most recent research has led me to a wide selection of classes at Skillshare including arts and crafts but not exclusively as they have over 18000 classes on a range of topics. I’ve just watched the class on using the Procreate app to create fun monsters by Nic Squirrell and here’s the project I created for that class.
Here’s a quick screen flow of creating the big guy. If you use this link you
I think the next class I’m going to do is a watercolour one by Ohn Mar Win 😃👍🏻
PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSES
One of the first places I checked out for photography classes was Creative Live. They have a range of courses on many subjects and you can view a host of those for free in a live format or equally buy access to watch the course in your own time. I started watching for free and then realised the value of the courses and did end up buying several. The first course I started with was The Photography Starter Kit for Beginners with John Greengo.
Although this class is titled ‘for beginners’ I actually found it to be jam-packed and a really thorough work through of many areas from understanding how a camera works to how to control the settings through to composition and is a really good place to start to learn how to use your camera.
Next, as I’d enjoyed John’s course so much, I took it up a notch with his Fundamentals of Digital Photography course. This course is a much more in-depth look at photography and I learnt so much! I bought this course and downloaded it on an external hard drive and watched it one summer throughout our travels picking up ideas as I went along. In fact, I think I must revisit this course again soon to refresh my memory :D
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Candice Stringham’s Craft Photography Fundamentals at Creative Live. I think it’s fabulous that this class is aimed at crafters. You may know Candice from her impressive CV within our industry and currently as Marketing Director of one my favourite brands; My Mind’s Eye. Not only that but her photography CV is equally impressive.
My search also took me to Craftsy. You will perhaps have come across Craftsy for their Papercrafts classes but they also have a range of photography classes too.
