Customer Reviews

Basic Jewelry Making: All the Skills and Tools You Need to Get Started (How To Basics)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!!

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.

This book is a must for beginners. It has easy to follow directions and the pictures are wonderful. It makes me feel like I can start right away and make some very pretty pieces. I would recommend this book for all those who are just starting out in the jewelry making craft.

It is a good book, however, it's not what I expected as a beginner. Too little beading projects and overboard in wire making jewelry. Not a good balance in different projects.

This book is a perfect primer for those who would like to make simple strands of necklaces and bracelets. I used Basic Jewelry Making as a guide to make my first coral chunk necklace that turned out really bold and gorgeous. Good how-to directions, doesn't make things harder than they need to be.

I had to wait weeks for this, as it was on backorder. But it was well worth it. The huge and detailed pictures are the best and I understand stuff now that I did not understand before. It's the best beginners book ever!

I'm an experienced jewelry maker who wanted to get more into stringing and other techniques. I had this book on my shelf for a long time and have been looking through it just recently. Despite the fact that it was technically correct in many ways, I felt very uninspired by its presentation. The projects are sort of ho-hum. Some of the techniques it describes are somewhat amateurish. The worse one was: they suggest using toothpaste for polishing silver, instead of using red rouge or more professional polishing techniques.... They seem to indicate that polishing silver correctly would be prohibitively expensive.. But if you're investing money in all the other tools and in the silver in order to make silver jewelry, using a dremel or buffing wheel with some red rouge shouldn't be too much of a hardship and is far better than using toothpaste! I felt they should have at least talked about the right way to polish jewelry, rather than just showing the toothpaste trick. Since toothpaste can contain abrasives, like baking soda, etc. - it can scratch delicate silver finishes and is really not that great of a suggestion for finishing a piece of handcrafted silver jewelry. You put in all that work to make something unique, personal and interesting in silver - you don't want to ruin the surface by using the wrong polishing technique just for the sake of cutting corners. (Warning: Don't use "silver cleaner" either... save that for silver you really *don't* care about, since most commercial silver cleaners contain corrosive materials that will strip the finish off of semiprecious stones and cause pitting and scarring in the metalwork... Sure, it will take off the tarnish instantly - but it will also shorten the life of your jewelry!) A better way to polish jewelry is to get a rotary tool (like a dremel) with a buffing wheel and some red rouge. That works on small pieces. If you get *really* serious, get a buffing wheel, like the ones sold at Ameritool. Using a small rotary tumbler with steel shot, a little water and a drop of dishwashing liquid and letting your silver jewelry tumble for an hour or so will also remove tarnish safely, without causing damage to either the metal surfaces or semiprecious stones.

There are many books out there that are far better for going through step-by-step techniques on making jewelry. Two of the best ones I've come across recently are "Beautiful Wire Jewelry For Beaders" and the "Complete Guide To Making Wire Jewelry". These aren't bead stringing books specifically and I'm still looking for a nicer book on bead stringing with more interesting, inspiring and advanced projects, though "The Basics of Bead Stringing" is nice for beginners...

i like the book, its a good handbook for those who enjoy making their own jewelry especially if you are a begginer or need a reference book near by

This is a great book for beginners. It gives you basic information in an easy to read and follow format. I would recommend this to anyone who would like to know what tools and supplies you need to get started and how-to's to get the projects rolling.