Creative Surface Design: Painting, Stamping, Stenciling, and Embossing Fabric & More, by Sandy Scrivano (PDF)

There are many wonderful and creative ways to decorate custom garments and home accessories, and this book features four of the most popular: stenciling, stamping, painting and embossing. The techniques are spelled out in detail, with step-by-step instructions.

"Yes, there are other books dealing with the art of applying different techniques to surfaces, covering painting, embossing, stenciling, and stamping. Not only does California artist Scrivano combine these four most popular methods but she also employs them easily, almost painlessly, on different home and wearable items. The idea is to give readers some basics of each technique, a few critical tips, and then showcase a bunch of decorated articles. In stenciling, for instance, she advocates using paper doilies or reversing the actual patterns for stencils, followed by a dragonfly suede table, among other ideas. All instructions are geared to beginners; the more than 45 patterns are intended as concepts, not actual patterns. Do it yourself starts right here. Barbara Jacobs"