Book Review of A Year of Creativity: A Craft Date Planner to Meet, Share, and Create by Petra Hoeksema, Lidy Nooij, Miriam Catshoek, Bregje Konings

 Title: A Year of Creativity: A Craft Date Planner to Meet, Share, and Create 

Authors: Petra Hoeksema,  Lidy Nooij, Miriam Catshoek, Bregje Konings

Source: Netgalley

Genre: Craft 

Rating: 4 

Do something creative every day! In A Year of Creativity, learn how to throw the perfect creative party with your friends—with organizing tips, 25 project ideas, and even recipes for snacks.

A "craft date" is a fun get-together with a handful of creative friends in which you surprise each other with craft and DIY projects using cool materials, inspire each other, and make beautiful things together. At each date, a group of participants share a self-made project to be re-created by the other attendees. Materials are individualized for each participant and given as a unique personal gift along with the instructions for the project. A craft date is different than a workshop since you get to choose the lovely people that you invite, and as the organizer, you get to participate in all the projects. Invitees can put their own spin on the project by using their favorite colors, materials, or techniques. This way you end up with a range of different interpretations and results, leading to new inspiration and ideas.

A Year of Creativity is a book for everyone with a basic knowledge of crocheting, knitting, and sewing. It does not teach you how to crochet or explain how a sewing machine works. There are plenty of other books for that. What it does do is inspire crafting enthusiasts to make something together, learn from each other, and have fun doing it. You'll find within:
An introduction to craft dates and how they work
Tips on planning your craft date events
Plenty of project ideas (short, long, and cooperative)
Plus recipes for party dishes that keep the creative juices flowing
You will share ideas, discover new inspiration, and find new friends while creating uniquely beautiful aprons, knit garlands, infinity scarves, haberdashery bags, cards, pencil cases, and more.Have you had a great craft date or are you working on a neat project and want to show it off? There’s a place for this in the craft dates community. On Instagram, for example, you can tag your photos with, or search for the hashtag #craftdates. You can have a look at each other’s work, drum up inspiration for your own dates, invite your Insta-friends, or organize a "blind date" with creative people from your town or city that you don’t know yet. A whole world will open up. A very creative world is waiting for you in A Year of Creativity.

I don’t know what happened when this book downloaded for me but for some reason my copy was totally messed up, I couldn’t see the majority of the images, list of supplies or the steps, but from what I did get to see I can say this book is great to inspire you and some friends to get together and either pick a project from this book or find a new project and craft together. 

Each project you’ll find a supply list along with, step by step instructions with images and has images. There is also a section about the authors and how all of the began and how they went about doing it.

You get several craft projects and a few recipes, most of which are for every skill level of crafter, but there are a few projects for very experienced crafters.