Books about Fashionistas from Amazon.com

Good news: You don’t have to sacrifice style just to pay your electric bill. Kathryn Finney, a.k.a. the Budget Fashionista, is the expert on all things chic and cheap. Now she opens up her Prada bag of shopping and style tips to make you fashionably frugal, with change to spare. It’s as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Know your budget: Learn innovative, money-saving ways to increase your clothing funds.
2. Know your style: Get helpful hints from fashion insiders and use them to develop your own mode of self-expression.
3. Know your bargains: Discover the art of scoring exclusive friends-and-
family coupons for your favorite department stores

Whether you’re a homemaker from Houston, a grandma from Grand Rapids, or an M.D. from Manhattan, you don’t need to break the bank to look your best. With great cost-cutting tips, at-home spa secrets, designer discount websites, and access to exclusive deals, The Budget Fashionista is like having your own personal stylist at your beck and call. So before you go out and commit the eighth deadly sin–buying a fake Louis Vuitton–read this must-have guide and learn to be style-smart and budget-wise!.
Price: $7.29 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sew Subversive is about making fashion your own, whether it's embellishing or customizing off-the-rack clothing or transforming clothes that have lost that loving feeling. The three twenty-something co-owners of Stitch Lounge, an urban sewing studio in San Francisco, teach you, in plain, fun language, how to do it, whether you're hand sewing, machine sewing, or, in a few cases, simply wielding a pair of scissors.

The first three chapters lay the ground work: Hand Sewing Basics, You and Your Machine, and Gearing Up, which includes Fabric 101, how to set up a sewing space, and a run-through first project on the sewing machine. Then the fun begins with Embellishing and Customizing projects, including adorning your pant legs with ribboning, turning a computer-scanned image into an iron-on that you can apply to a t-shirt or skirt, taking in a skirt, or untapering a pair of pants (the authors believe tapered pants are the devil's work). Then move onto Refashioning: The Next Life of Your Old Clothes and turn a t-shirt into a skirt, a sweater into a halter top or legwarmers, or a pair of pants into a hip belt. There are 22 projects in all, some of which only require an iron and/or pair of scissors, while others can be sewn by hand, for those readers who haven't yet made the sewing machine plunge..
Price: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This cutting-edge, applied book highlights the relevance of sociology by including a diverse collection of theories, research, and "lived experiences" that accurately mirror the diversity in society itself. The author's vivid, applied, personal writing style engages students, and activates compelling everyday examples that make sociology particularly relevant to today's diverse students. SOCIOLOGY IN OUR TIMES is noted for its especially strong integration of engaging "Lived Experiences" - extended examples that focus on various issues to illustrate chapter coverage. These extended examples are introduced with the vignette that opens each chapter and are then carried throughout the chapter in various boxes, features, and exercises. Kendall's text is acclaimed in the field for being the first textbook to integrate race, class, and gender issues, and for its thorough presentation of sociological theory, which includes diverse theoretical viewpoints such as feminist and postmodernist theory. Kendall shows students that sociology involves important questions and issues that they confront both personally and vicariously..
Price: $18.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

AH-HA! I SEE IT NOW!

Everyone has experienced that joyful moment when the light flashes on -- the Ah-Ha! of creativity

Creativity. It is the force that drives problem-solving, informs effective decision-making and opens new frontiers for ambition and intelligence. Those who succeed have learned to harness their creative power by keeping that light bulb turned on.

Now, Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the million-copy best-seller that proved all people can draw well just as they can read well, has decoded the secrets of the creative process to help you tap your full creative potential and apply that power to everyday problems. How does Betty Edwards do this? Through the power of drawing -- power you can harness to see problems in new ways.

Through simple step-by-step exercises that require no special artistic abilities, Betty Edwards will teach you how to take a new point of view, how to look at things from a different perspective, how to see the forest and the trees, in short, how to bring your visual, perceptual brainpower to bear on creative problem-solving.

You will learn how the creative process progresses from stage to stage and how to move your own problem-solving through these key steps:

* First insight

* Saturation

* Incubation

* Illumination (the Ah-Ha!)

* Verification

Whether you are a business manager, teacher, writer, technician, or student, you'll find Drawing on the Artist Within the most effective program ever created for tapping your creative powers. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of instructional drawings and the work of master artists, this book is written for people with no previous experience in art..
Price: $4.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $13.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Fashion—it's an obsession for millions. But for four lucky, talented girls, fashion is a full-time, style-transforming . . . internship in New York City! Some might call it work, but as interns at high-end Couture magazine, Callie, Nadine, Ava, and Aynsley are workin' it in style.

Callie Ryan:

Innocent aspiring designer or claws-out fashion phony?

Nadine Van Buren:

Brings the party. Loves to party (even if it's a pity party).

Ava Barton:

Happy to be here . . . and about to take over!

Aynsley Rothwell:

Sexy socialite with a killer wardrobe—and the attitude to match.

Hanging with the Couture interns is what's in this season. But who's the glamorous sage behind the Fashionista blog serving up style wisdom and sartorial send-ups?

It's enough to spark a hot-and-heavy fashion frenzy. Hold on to your Manolos . . . read on and find out.

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Price: $0.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A fashionista is a girl who always looks current and cutting edge, even when her clothes are vintage 1975. A fashionista can tell her Pucci from her Gucci and her Blahniks from her Choos, but she’s as comfortable in Kmart as she is in Chanel. She wears what she likes and always looks fantastic. She’s a clothing chameleon: a sharp tweed suit and ladylike driving gloves one moment, a punk rock T-shirt and studded belt the next. She’s a gypsy, a princess, and a diva. She’s fashion-forward, shopping-addicted, and full of fun. And you can be her, no matter your size, style, or budget.
Authors Melissa de la Cruz and Karen Robinovitz are fashionistas who share a love for impractical shoes, small dogs that fit in designer handbags, and wearing white after Labor Day. They eat, sleep, and breathe fashion. And they’ll teach you how to

• Make a whole new wardrobe out of the awful duds that lurk in the back of your closet
• Use the words “postmodern” and “ironic” to fake your way through pseudo-intellectual cocktail conversation (really–it’s easy, and so postmodern and ironic!)
• Score big with chic and cheap finds at thrift stores, consignment shops, and discount designer outlets
• Live like a socialite on a shoestring budget

In two weeks or less, you’ll be living the lush life, from the brim of your Eugenia Kim fedora to the tip of your pointy Christian Louboutin pumps!.
Price: $2.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Adobe Creative Suite 3 has fantastic tools for minimizing the drudgery of
graphics production work: The key is to make your computer and Photoshop,
Illustrator, and InDesign do rote tasks for you. And although the concept of
automation may sound intimidating, it doesn’t have to be. Learn what
automation is, why it’s as natural as breathing, and how it can take over
routine work, freeing you up to be creative.

· Combine customer data with graphics for personalized communications

· Customize hundreds or even thousands of illustrations or layouts in
one pass

· Record tasks with macro-like Actions in Photoshop and Illustrator,
then reuse them with multiple files

· Learn how scripting languages like AppleScript and JavaScript can
automate complex workflows, even ones with varying conditions

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Price: $13.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the 1930s and 1940s, a loose alliance of blacks and whites, individuals and organizations, came together to offer a radical alternative to southern conservative politics. In Days of Hope, Patricia Sullivan traces the rise and fall of this movement. Using oral interviews with participants in this movement as well as documentary sources, she demonstrates that the New Deal era inspired a coalition of liberals, black activists, labor organizers, and Communist Party workers who sought to secure the New Deal's social and economic reforms by broadening the base of political participation in the South.

From its origins in a nationwide campaign to abolish the poll tax, the initiative to expand democracy in the South developed into a regional drive to register voters and elect liberals to Congress. The NAACP, the CIO Political Action Committee, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare coordinated this effort, which combined local activism with national strategic planning. Although it dramatically increased black voter registration and led to some electoral successes, the movement ultimately faltered, according to Sullivan, because the anti-Communist fervor of the Cold War and a militant backlash from segregationists fractured the coalition and marginalized southern radicals. Nevertheless, the story of this campaign invites a fuller consideration of the possibilities and constraints that have shaped the struggle for racial democracy in America since the 1930s..
Price: $21.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]