Crafting a Meaningful Home : 27 DIY Projects to Tell Stories, Hold Memories, and Celebrate Family Heritage

Crafting a Meaningful Home is a collection of approximately 25 DIY decorating/craft projects that celebrate the personal stories, heritage and treasured memories of their makers. The text covers both the story behind each project featured as well as step-by-step instructions so that readers can recreate their own versions of these projects. For example, a San Francisco couple tracks their romance by artfully framing notes they have shared since meeting. A stationery designer presents family silhouettes; a children's wear designer shares her button Christmas garland (made out of buttons inherited from a grandmother, scavenged as a child and picked up during her world travels); and two best friends and co-owners of the Los Angeles boutique Reform School present a tepee for their kids made out of a vintage quilt.

Meg Mateo Ilasco is a designer, writer and illustrator. She is the principal of Mateo Ilasco, a design studio in the San Francisco Bay Area that creates paper and home goods. She is the author of Craft, Inc. and the follow-up Craft, Inc. Business Planner, as well as the upcoming Creative, Inc. (which will be released by Chronicle in September 2010, around the same time as Crafting A Meaningful Home) and Space Planner: A Home-Decorating and Design Workbook. She writes a monthly business column for Design Sponge and hosts Modern Economy, a series of on-site and online sample sales for independent designers. Visit her website at mateoilasco.com.