According to Amy Sedaris, it’s often said that ugly people craft and attractive people have sex. But in her new book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People she does for crafting what she did so successfully for entertaining in her bestseller I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. Described as a subversive take on the made-by-hand movement, Sedaris shows that anyone with a couple of hours to kill and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters. Readers will discover how to make crab claw roach clips and crepe paper moccasins; where to look for inspiration (buy fruit and let it get old, what shapes does it turn into?) and ways to avoid the most common crafting accidents (sawdust fires, feather asphyxia, pine cone lodged in throat).

Less well known in the UK than in her native US, Amy Sedaris is a hugely popular comedian and actress whose books have established her as a sort of anti Martha Stewart. I Like You, her deadpan guide to throwing parties, was an attempt to return to the times when entertaining was charmingly old-fashioned, ‘like courtship or back alley abortions’.

She offers helpful hints and real recipes to novice party planners from how to freeze meatballs (on a cookie sheet so they won’t stick together) to dealing with the inebriated (‘Better to cut them off rather than … allow them to stay over and wet your bed). She’s a generous but crafty hostess (‘fill your medicine cabinet with marbles. Nothing announces a nosey guest better than an avalanche of marbles hitting a porcelain sink’). Etiquette pointers include inappropriate introductions (‘This is Barbara, she can’t have children’) and things to avoid saying to the grieving (‘Did she smoke?’ ‘Was he drinking?’ ‘Where were you when this happened?’). Her instructions on removing vomit stains ends with ‘just toss it, chances are you’ve stained it before.’

Both books are brilliantly illustrated with kitcshy illustrations and photos of Sedaris in a range of Cindy Sherman like poses as a hormonal teenager, Barbie and Jesus. Simple Times is published by Grand Central Publishing, I Like You by Warner Books.