How2crafts are a Birmingham based publishing company currently residing in the Jewellery Quarter, who’ve put together this series of step-by-step books on various crafts, including soap making, printing, jewellery and felting.

Designed to expand over time, craft makers are invited to contribute images of what they’ve made using the books, to the website. Collected images will be put together in a ‘readers appendix’, offering inspiration for other readers.

Currently on sale in the We Are Birmingham shop, they’ll also be at the Kitchen Garden Cafe’s Christmas fair on 30 Nov, and in Kings Heath on Dec 13. For a bit less, you can also download the ebook over at www.how2crafts.com

A book written and published independently by local writer Matt Wilding.

Tristan Marley is a drunk. He is dishonest, work-shy, selfish and a murderer of kittens. He has no self respect, failed dreams, and feels as though the world, which is crueler to he than any other man, owes him one.

Forced to take up menial employment, and instantly despising it, Tristan concocts a devilish scheme to secure the big pay day that he undeniably deserves. Chewed up, and spat out, Tristan is left at the brink of his own sanity, maimed and drowning in a constant supply of whiskey, when a chance encounter with a magpie changes everything.

If you like the sound of that, you can read the opening chapter in full and buy the book over at Magpie Press.

The lovely cover art has been designed by local illustrator, Charlotte Audrey Owen-Meehan, who also curated the Not My Type exhibition which you’ll probably remember from the CiB Shop.