Product Description

This fully illustrated guide shows how to make all kinds of funky and elegant bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and pendants using beads and wire. It begins with the basics - planning a design, attaching fittings, making secure crimps, selecting beads - so crafters can quickly get started creating one-of-a-kind pieces. Simple wire-bending techniques allow them to make beaded drop earrings as well as more elaborate necklace and bracelet designs. Advanced techniques use metallic, sterling silver, even 14-carat-gold wire to make gallery-quality jewellery in almost any style and size. Featuring design ideas by a variety of jewellers, this book includes pictures and descriptions of tools and materials, a guide to common types of beads, advice on proper lengths and fit, and inspiration for creating a wide range of styles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59790 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 109 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780811732635
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Ted Walker is a juried member of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen and the owner of a handcrafted jewelry company based in central Pennsylvania.

Alan Wycheck is an award-winning photographer based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Full of photos, spiral bound - great book.
Why aren't more jewelry books like this one? "Basic Jewelry Making" has page after page of large, close-up photos of each step in a technique or project. It is spiral bound so it lays flat as I compare my wire wrapping with the one in the photo. Incredible. Each page has about 3-6 photos. The text is in the step by step captions underneath each photo.

There are three main sections to this book:

* Working with Beads
* Beads with Wire
* Bending Silver and Gold Wire

The introductory section explains the tools and materials you will need to get started. There are large photos of each tool and material. The first technique illustrated is essential in creating great-looking beaded jewelry - crimping. The photos give a clear view of how to do it and what the finished results should look like. The project that follows walks you through each step of creating a simple necklace with a clasp. The finished piece looks very professional. The next few projects in this section illustrate more techniques, including an elegant floating crimp. Using elastic cord, crimping on silk cord, and making polymer clay beads, are also helpful and are a nice bonus.

The next section of this book, Beading with Wire, is a comprehensive course in intermediate techniques. Here's where I learned lots of new ideas. This chapter focuses on working with headpins, loops, dangles and wire wrapping. A complex necklace separated by wire-wrapped loops is fantastic and each step is shown with photos. The final project lets you have fun with just wire by making a nice wire-wrapped pendant.

Once you've mastered these techniques, you're ready to play with the big boys. The last section, Bending Silver and Gold Wire, will show you how to make gallery quality pieces. The tools and materials section is full of pictures and explained thoroughly. All of this material was new to me, and quite interesting. From sterling silver and gold wire, you bend and hammer it into earrings, bracelets and more. The finishing techniques add that extra pizazz to your jewelry. From these lessons, you can go in many creative directions.

I was really struck by the quality of the instructions in this book. The photos are large and close-up and the captions are detailed and helpful. I've learned some of the secrets to the beautiful jewelry that I've seen at fine craft shows. "Oh, so that's how they do that," I thought more than once while reading and examining the photos. By far, one of the best jewelry making books on the market today.

MUST HAVE for beginners learning jewerly making!!!
This book is not only spiral bound to make it easy to use, the COLORED, detailed pictures can make anyone master the jewerly making techniques. For instance, I really needed some help figuring out how to make the wrapped loops and learned I wss using the wrong kind of wire AND not holding the pliers correctly. What a difference it has made for me as I expand my new hobby!

I think this book is well written and worth every penny. I will refer to it again and again.

Now if only writers would now produce a book for more advanced techniques!!

More than a once-over lightly tutorial !!!!!
The title of this well presented book tells all--I found the layout, flow, diagrams and index all extremely helpful as a 10-thumbed beginner to beading. Every topic is clearly and concisely covered so that a beginner of any age group can understand the hows, wheres and whyfores.