Learn to Carve Gnomes, Trolls, and Mythical Creatures: 15 Simple Step-by-Step Projects (Fox Chapel Publishing) Woodcarving Plans & Instructions for a Unicorn, Wizard, Dragon, Elf, Toad, Owl, and More Paperback – October 13, 2020

This book was on preorder for several months and it finally arrived!! What a delightful book of projects. The author and publisher have created an outstanding book for learning how to carve these fun projects. Sara Barraclough’s amazing ability to carve, teach, and paint are well demonstrated. The book provides excellent instruction, photos and options that allow and encourage individual creativity.There are a variety of skill levels that will take a beginner from simple carves and guide them through to more advanced projects. They are also advanced enough to provide a challenge and interest for a seasoned carver.The projects are all fun and enticing. I want to do everyone of them. The sleepy fox to the fabulous wizard. There isn’t one project I wouldn’t love to produce. Usually I will find a book with a few projects that draw my interest but I don’t often find a book where I love ALL of the projects! Every project in this book will be fun to carve!You won’t be disappointed with this book. One of the best features is the author’s painting instructions. She is a gifted painter with her projects, which brings them to life. I hope to achieve her level of painting my projects.Thanks go out to this gifted carver and fox chapel!

Just a beginner carver this book worked really well for me. So far I’ve carved 5 of the characters and am very happy with how they look. The instructions are good and the detailed pictures of the character really help put my carvings into perspective.

First, these are really nice projects for a multitude of skill levels. I am an experienced carver and I have found some good projects to carve, and my daughter is a beginner and there are also good projects for her. I have however found a couple of areas that can make things challenging.First, on some of the patterns in the back of the book, the front and side views don't line up with each other. So if you cut to them and start carving, you have some confusion or work to do to bring the cutout into alignment - leave yourself extra material. This is especially true of the Gnome.Second, I think the more advanced projects could benefit by a few more photos. Most of the projects don't require this, but some do.Third, some of the instructions are a bit vague or simple for the number of operations being performed between steps.Overall, I would buy the book again. There are fun projects keeping my daughter interested in carving and I have made a gifted a number of the projects now.

Great example of small carving examples easy to follow helpful cut out patterns. Looking forward to the next book.

This is a wonderful woodcarving book for any skill level. The projects are broken up by difficulty, each with detailed instruction on not only how to carve the projects, but how to also paint and finish each one. The author even writes fun little descriptions of each carving to help further bring them to life, and overall just adds to the fun and charm of the book.Included in the back of the book are templates for each carving, which can be easily photo copied and resized for varying sizes of wood.While the author does give detailed instructions for each carving, they can easily be slightly modified into something slightly different, such as turning the friendly woodsman project into a little Santa Clause, and the author encourages this. Thus you will most likely get more than 15 projects out of this book.Overall I think this is a wonderful book, and I hope the author, Sara Barraclough, keeps up the amazing work.

Love this carving style. Can’t wait to try a few

I'm very excited to work my way through this book! The projects are very cute and customizable. I love the animals and fantasy creatures. In the intro the author states that beginners (that's me) should start with the first project and work consecutively through the book, gaining experience and technique. Those techniques and skills will build upon each other as the book progresses. I really like this set up, no guessing about what to try next. More experienced carvers could jump around to whatever they fancy. The only thing that is not included is a basic demonstration of different types of cuts, which the author expects you to already know. There are plenty of YT videos and other beginner books where you can find this info, so it doesn't bother me, but others might like to know. Each project has multiple photos of the step by step instructions and thoughts on customizing the carving and painting. It's a really well done book.

This is a good book for beginners except for one thing, it assumes the reader/woodworker has a relatively expensive piece of equipment: a bandsaw. There are other less expensive tools you can use to cut out the blanks like a scroll saw or just a knife to rough out the shape. I think it would be better for a book that includes projects intended for beginners to have some discussion of other ways to accomplish the same tasks using more basic tools.But that being said, the book has some cute projects that are fun to do. It also offers good tips for finishing & painting the projects. This would be a good book for a woodworker who already has the required tools (like a bandsaw) to try some carving projects.NetGalley gave me a free eBook copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.