Booknote: Craft Fail

Heather Mann, Craft Fail: When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong. New York: Workman Publishing, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-7611-7992-4.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: arts and crafts, humor
Format: paperback
Source: my local public library. 

"Celebrates the creative process, but from the other side. This is the stuff that gets the A for Effort and LOL for outcome." -from book description.

This is a good book to read during holiday times, be it Christmas or Easter or any other holiday where crafting is popular; reading it will give you something you can relate to if you do any crafting, or you have been the recipient of some well-intentioned but less than perfect craft. This is another one of those books derived from a website (craftfail.com), but compared to others I have read in the Internet-derived genre, this one was pretty good. For one, it is generous in photos, which are in full color so you can appreciate the fails, blunders, and disasters. A photo of the crafts as they are supposed to be is also included for comparison purposes, and probably so you can laugh even more.

Another good element in the book is the author's commentary. She comments on the fails, and she does have some wit and humor. However, she let's the photos do most of the talking. In addition, the author also includes quotes from some of the crafters, which add to the humor. In terms of humor, there are quite a few hilarious gems here. Each chapter features a short introductory commentary from the author to introduce the crafts. Crafts then range from food items to clothing attempts to things done by kids with results that range from hilarious to downright horrifying.

Overall, I really liked this book. It is definitely a good choice for public libraries, especially if they circulate a lot of craft books and/or host crafting programs. I think crafters will appreciate the humor and in some cases maybe, just maybe, they'll think twice before jumping into trying to replicate a project out of Pinterest that is beyond their skill level.

4 out of 5 stars.