What is Creative Stuff? Creative Stuff is inspiring and colorful. Creative Stuff can be messy, witty and wonderful. Creative Stuff is a tool that brings humor and fun to the creative process. Creative Stuff is full of puzzles, games, activities and thought-starters. Creative Stuff is a workbook for visual creatives, and youÆre holding it right now. Exercise your imagination through interactive games and challenges, sharpen your brainpower with puzzles and brain teasers, and find inspiration when you need it most! This workbook will jumpstart creativity and brainstorming for visual thinkers—you know who you are! Every page will stimulate the senses and get those creative juices flowing fast and furious.

How to start your own business, grow you client base, and promote yourself without selling out or starving. This no faff, no fluff guide is peppered with applicable advice (things we learned from starting our own business), unasked-for humor, and worksheets (homework, gasp!) to help you just get started already. Because raw talent and good ideas aren't enough. And because you can do this. Really.Learn How to: Structure your business, File all the paperwork,Write a business plan, Make a budget, Get great contract templates, Set pricing, Pitch a quote, Build a client roster, Communicate effectively, Stay organized, Grow your audience, Manage your money, & More!

The Highlights Book of Things to Do is the essential book of pure creativity and inspiration. Kids ages seven and up will find hundreds of ways to build, play, experiment, craft, cook, dream, think, and become outstanding citizens of the world. This highly visual, hands-on activity book shows kids some of the best ways to do great things--from practicing the lost arts of knot-tying, building campfires, connecting circuits, playing jump rope, drawing maps, and writing letters, to learning how to empower themselves socially, emotionally, and in their communities. The final chapter, Do Great Things, inspires kids become caring individuals, confident problem solvers, and thoughtful people who can change the world. Full List of Chapters: Things to Do Inside Things to Do Outside Science Experiments to Do Things to Build Things to Do with Your Brain Things to Do in the Kitchen Things to Draw Things to Write Things to Do with Color Things to Do with Paper More Things to Do with Recycled Materials Do Great Things National Parenting Seal of Approval Winner, National Parenting Product Award (NAPPA) Winner, Mom's Choice Award, Gold

From "the godfather behind creative nonfiction" (Vanity Fair) comes this indispensable how-to for nonfiction writers of all levels and genres, "reminiscent of Stephen King's fiction handbook On Writing" (Kirkus). Whether you're writing a rags-to-riches tell-all memoir or literary journalism, telling true stories well is hard work. In You Can't Make This Stuff Up, Lee Gutkind, the go-to expert for all things creative nonfiction, offers his unvarnished wisdom to help you craft the best writing possible. Frank, to-the-point, and always entertaining, Gutkind describes and illustrates every aspect of the genre. Invaluable tools and exercises illuminate key steps, from defining a concept and establishing a writing process to the final product. Offering new ways of understanding the genre, this practical guidebook will help you thoroughly expand and stylize your work.

Lessons from and for the creative professions of art, science, design, and engineering: how to live in and with the Plenitude, that dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff that creates the need for more of itself. We live with a lot of stuff. The average kitchen, for example, is home to stuff galore, and every appliance, every utensil, every thing, is compound--composed of tens, hundreds, even thousands of other things. Although each piece of stuff satisfies some desire, it also creates the need for even more stuff: cereal demands a spoon; a television demands a remote. Rich Gold calls this dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff the "Plenitude." And in this book--at once cartoon treatise, autobiographical reflection, and practical essay in moral philosophy--he tells us how to understand and live with it. Gold writes about the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory (but in his view, complementary) perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer--all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career. "I have spent my life making more stuff for the Plenitude," he writes, acknowledging that the Plenitude grows not only because it creates a desire for more of itself but also because it is extraordinary and pleasurable to create. Gold illustrates these creative expressions with witty cartoons. He describes "seven patterns of innovation"--including "The Big Kahuna," "Colonization" (which is illustrated by a drawing of "The real history of baseball," beginning with "Play for free in the backyard" and ending with "Pay to play interactive baseball at home"), and "Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff" (and its corollary, "Technology Desires to Be Product"). Finally, he meditates on the Plenitude itself and its moral contradictions. How can we in good conscience accept the pleasures of creating stuff that only creates the need for more stuff? He quotes a friend: "We should be careful to make the world we actually want to live in."

This fun title gives kids lots of ideas for projects to make for family and friends using a wide variety of materials. It will inspire kids to be creative and make homemade gifts from the heart. The projects range from making mouse pads to painting personalized tools to making a golf stroke counter and beyond! There's sure to be something that will interest all types of kids. Not only will they learn new craft techniques, they'll be able to experience the joy of giving handmade gifts! Step-by-step instructions and photographs make the projects easy to follow. Checkerboard Library is an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.