Vintage Crafts: 75 Do-It-Yourself Decorating Projects Using Candles, Colors, and Other Flea Market Finds - Hardcover

Clara Lidström is a professional photographer and journalist, and she writes one of Scandinavia’s most popular blogs, UnderbaraClara. Encouraging an environmentally friendly, country-living lifestyle, she blogs about cooking, home decorating, home-growing food, and crafting. She lives with husband Jacob, son Bertil, a dog, two pigs, and some chickens in Västerbotten, Sweden.

In this book, which is based on her blog, Lidström plays that pretty, talented friend who makes flea market finds and shabby chic decor seem enviable. The author makes make-do and mend look like high design, from her collection of beloved vintage dresses to a scrapbooked linen cabinet decorated with wallpaper. The author never lets her flea market evangelizing (I fear that we're annihilating our heritage in the rush to constantly consume what's new and modern.) overtake her enthusiasm at remaking a great bargain. Her favorite thing to do is to pimp her finds: a set of old speakers with lace, notebooks with vintage girls' book covers, and a lampshade. The book contains a few gems, such as a recipe for wallpaper paste using water, sugar, and potato flour, as well as tips for freshening up old clothes with flaxseed oil soft soap. Her advice isn't always new—using newspaper to form cups for seedlings or attaching jar lids underneath a shelf—but no matter. The book is less a practicum and more an idiosyncratic and inspiring romp through the charming space that Lidström has created from scraps and paint. Framing that world is a series of gorgeous, light-filled, photos, in which the author and her son often play a supporting role to the author's lime-and-red retro kitchen or her tastefully unkempt vegetable garden. (Oct.)