This full-colour guided journal provides a flexible framework for those looking to change their messy ways. Through prompts, challenges, and checklists, readers will explore their relationship with cleaning: why they hate it, what stands in their way, and how to make small changes that lead to big results down the road. Cleaning Sucks will help you define your own measure of success - nevermind those unattainable #goals in glossy magazines and TV makeover shows. Everyone deserves a space they love, but that means something different for everyone. When inspiration does strike to get up and declutter, you'll find easy-to-accomplish tasks, ways to track new habits as they're being built, and other real-life tools to help you reach your home goals. And for when you just need a little extra motivation, Cleaning Sucks provides tips, tricks, quotes, and gentle kicks in the pants to get you off your butt and tidying up.

The book covers the first steps - tools and materials, how to select a scale and draw up plans; tyres and wheels - making moulds, techniques for wire and spoked wheels; painting and material finishes - brush painting and spraying, upholstery and brightwork; and chassis - bodywork and the engine.

The "LEGO Neighborhood Book" is your guide to creating incredible LEGO buildings. Snap together a few apartments, shops, houses, and soon you'll have a whole neighborhood

Inside these pages, you'll learn techniques for recreating classic architectural styles in LEGO bricks, like San Francisco's famous Victorians and New York City's brownstones. LEGO model-building experts Brian and Jason Lyles will teach you how to create interesting architectural features like cornices and false fronts, and how to construct porches and detailed interiors.

With full color instructions for three multistory houses and many smaller builds (like a reclining armchair and an old-timey lamppost), "The LEGO Neighborhood Book" will give you hours of building fun. What will your neighborhood look like?

This book is about one ordinary person's efforts, largely carried out single-handedly and with limited funds, to build a model railway layout in his garden that runs just like the real thing. It is based on Brymbo in North Wales, where the GWR and LNER were joined by the LMS in the search for mineral wealth. Allen Jackson's recreation runs between three sheds and features empty and loaded coal trains travelling from colliery to steelworks; pickup goods; branch passenger and excursion traffic; and even its very own CCTV and system to aid signalling. Packed with wonderful illustrations including photographs and layout diagrams, this book is a wonderful tribute to a lifetime's hobby and will delight railway modellers both young and old.

Many children spend hours enjoying their first train set - but imagine that the hobby never runs out of steam and the train set develops into a lifelong hobby. That first set conceivably could have been made by Tri-ang ( (c) Hornby Hobbies Ltd), a member of the Lines Bros group of companies. Following a brief history of Tri-ang from its formation to the present-day Hornby, Dave Angell provides an enjoyable account of the overall range in general, covering some of the classic models in detail, and providing an overview of changes that were made over the years, as well as the kinds of details that collectors should look out for when sourcing rarer items. This book takes a wide look at collecting Tri-ang, including the tools and parts available from Tri-ang's network of service dealers, and some of the compatible systems that Tri-ang made to complement the railway system. Learn also where to buy items and discover the wealth of advice and enthusiasm in the social community that has grown up around collectors, both online and 'for real'; but above all, look through these pages and enjoy the happy childhood memories they are sure to conjure up!

Use the puzzles in this book to sharpen your mind and improve your ability to focus. The perfect antidote to staring at a screen for hours on end, Paper, Pencil and You: Focus presents over 300 puzzles designed to improve focus in a distracted world. With each one you will learn to eliminate mental distractions, improve concentration and develop your powers of deduction. Test your skills with a range of visual conundrums and lateral-thinking problems that include matching pairs, odd one out and pathfinding. Keen puzzlers will find themselves absorbed in developing their memory and visual processing skills, called on to think laterally and logically to find solutions, and will emerge from each exercise feeling relaxed and refreshed. Switch off from screens, pick up a pencil and focus.

Relax. Let your shoulders drop, turn your phone to silent and take one (freshly sharpened) pencil. Paper, Pencil and You: Calm contains over 300 puzzles designed to foster calm in a stressed-out, busy world. The puzzles in this book will take you on a journey through a wonderland of calming activities. You'll divide shapes, draw loops, fill grids and much, much more. Each one has been designed to give you a moment of peace; a break from the hectic pace of life and a chance to quieten the mental noise. With sections for practice runs and workings out, each puzzle is designed to be completed on the page itself. As you complete the book you'll be unconsciously developing your memory and visual processing skills, thinking laterally and logically to find solutions, but will emerge from each exercise feeling relaxed and refreshed. So, sharpen that pencil, turn over the page and feel calm.

Brian King has spent a lifetime either thinking of, or actually building, model boats. This book is the result of that life's work, as well as 25 years' experience as a trained engineer and a college lecturer in engineering. It tackles advanced theory and practice for the maritime modeller and the author's own philosophy on model-making. The book covers the philosophy of model-making; building static and working models, researching sources of information and reading drawings. In the workshop, the projects involve materials, hulls, superstructure and decks, armament, ships' boats, finishing and painting, etching and making glass display cases. The advanced theory and technique in this book is largely based on the author's own very complicated modelling projects, including Victorian warships Devastation and Magnificent, 20th century ships Belfast and Queen Elizabeth, the pre-war aircraft carrier Glorious and the battleship Anson, as well as scale model RNLI lifeboats including Grace Darling's famous coble.

Get hooked on crocheting with this crochet book for beginners! Filled with step-by-step illustrations for an easy-to-follow and fully visual experience, this fool proof guide will have you starting your first crochet project right away! Inside the pages of this illustrative crochet reference guide from DK Books, you'll find: - Over 100 key techniques and 20 easy projects to get you started - Clear step-by-step photography and easy-to-follow instructions - Advice on what materials you need and how to use them - An introduction to colour theory and how to combine colours for optimum effect If you've always wanted to learn how to crochet but thought it would be too tough, this is the ultimate book for you! From choosing the right hooks and crochet yarn to basic stitches and patterns, Crochet Step By Step explains all the tools, materials, and techniques you'll need to get started. You'll be making scarfs, blankets, baby hats, and cushions in no time! This basic crochet book includes a concise explanation of stitch symbols and abbreviations together with clear guidelines on how to read crochet patterns. There are 20 projects to practice what you've learned about stitches, techniques, and tools, so you can go from a novice to an expert! There's also helpful advice on which colour combinations to use for beautiful results. On Your Marks. Get Set. Stitch! This newly updated edition includes a fresh design and brand-new photography that shows the stitches with gorgeous clarity. Gorgeous photos of finished projects will inspire you to pick up your crochet hook and get creative! It's the perfect gift for anyone who wants to learn how to crochet. Complete the Series: Fully illustrated and easy to use, the DK Step by Step series covers all the essential skills and techniques you need to succeed in a specific activity. Once you've mastered the art of crocheting, learn to perfect your embroidery skills with Sew Step by Step.

However well equipped the workshop may be there seems to be an incessant need to make up special gadgets of one sort or another. These may range from mutilating a clothes peg to act as a 'third hand' up to major modifications to an existing machine tool. The making of such devices can be fun (indeed, some may appear to do nothing else!) but nevertheless the time taken up in 'devising the device' can often delay the completion of an important project. Shared experience is a most potent tool in reducing such delays, and can, moreover, often provide solutions to problems hitherto believed to be intractable. Tubal Cain has enjoyed more than sixty years' experience in designing and building engines and machines (in both full size and model dimensions) and over this time has made many ancillary devices. In this book he shares 52 of them with you. A number of these had been published in magazines from time to time and some were assembled in volume form about thirty years ago. The opportunity was later taken not only to reprint that book but to revise some of the entries to take advantage of user experience, to add new material and to introduce it into the popular Workshop Practice Series.

Tin toys had been made in Japan before the Second World War, but they reached new heights of realism in the 1950s. The postwar American occupation of Japan gave Japanese toymakers ready access to the lucrative American toy market, and as a result most of the tin toy cars made in this period were based on American vehicles like Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Packards. Like the real things, these tin toys were big. A small one would be around eight inches long, with some of the largest stretching to eighteen inches. As such, tinplate was the ideal medium to capture the look of American styling of the 1950s, a period when size mattered, and car manufacturers tried to outdo each other with the extravagance of their designs, the size of their tailfins and the amount of chrome. During this era of consumerism, Japanese toy production was at its peak, with exotically-named manufacturers like Marusan, Bandai, Yonezawa and Alps turning out vast quantities of tin toys. It proved to be a short-lived phase in the history of toy production. By the early 1960s, tin toys were falling out of fashion for various reasons: their sharp edges gave rise to safety concerns; die-cast models were becoming increasingly realistic and sophisticated, with many action features that appealed to children; the development of plastics in the toy industry made tin toys look increasingly old-fashioned. Half a century later, there are very few surviving examples of these magnificent playthings. Bruce Sterling of New York has devoted years to seeking out the very best examples of Japanese tinplate cars and has built up what is probably the world's finest collection of these toys, every one of them in pristine condition, complete with their original boxes which are works of art in themselves.This book showcases 150 examples of the very rarest Japanese tin toy cars, many of them never having been pictured in books or magazines until now. Almost every major American motor manufacturer is represented here, together with a selection of commercial vehicles and a significant number of European cars, too. All are illustrated in full colour and described in detail, and fascinating insights are provided into both the real vehicles and the companies that modelled them, together with a guide to rarity and current values. This is a book that will be treasured, not only by specialist collectors, but by all who are passionate about vintage toys and classic vehicles.