DECOUPAGE CRAFTS

Two redundant introductions to crafts that get better treatment even in the unspectacular Lothrop series. Here Temko gives decoupage beginners some unexacting directions for cutting, sanding, sealing, pasting and glazing, and she offers a few ideas for materials and projects, but without any pictures of items worth emulating or any indication that there might be more to decoupage. As for Choate and Green's Patchwork, not only are the black and red checkerboard illustrations simple to the point of total boredom, with no examples of traditional patterns such as ""log cabin"" that allow for creative variation, but the authors use the term ""patchwork"" so loosely as to include sewing a pocket on ""your"" jeans, decorating your sneakers with magic markers (!) and sewing a tracing of your hand onto a book bag or notebook. Other inane projects include glueing fabric squares all over a parsons table and sewing a row of them along one edge of a towel or wash cloth. Demonstrating only that there are still some scraps that can't be salvaged.