Famous Jewelry Collections: THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Thursday, September 1, 2011

THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Posted: 01 Sep 2011 04:00 AM PDT

Has it been a year already? How time flies! Once a year, the editors from Bead and Button ~~battle it out~~ get together to select the best projects from the magazine.

Kalmbach Publishing just sent me their latest effort, Creative Beading Vol. 6 for review. This collection might just be the book for beading enthusiasts who don't subscribe.

As expected, the majority of the projects are bead work ranging from easy to it's-going-to-take-a-long-time advanced! Click on their preview page to see some of them in greater detail than I can show here.

The editors also picked different types of bead work, making sure the book will appeal to varying tastes and abilities. There are ring projects as well as beaded bead designs as shown in the top left of the cover.

Beaders who like to use pearls and crystals will also not be disappointed. There are also projects which use other jewelry making components like bead caps and curved metal tubes.

Yes, there was also a project on how to do the traditional beaded cabochon. But what delighted me were two other designs which framed cabochons in refreshingly new ways :

The last but smaller section of the book covers other techniques such as wire work and chain maille. The inclusion of some chain maille designs shows the editors are well aware that this technique is now mainstream. How do I know it is mainstream? You can now found cheap chain maille kits in Walmart!

One absolute delight was the final project in the book. If you are struggling with traditional bead rope crochet, this method is so much easier to get that spiral pattern. (I plan to cover traditional bead rope crochet in a future post).

Bead kumihimo weaving was another technique featured. It was used to weave a spiral rope for a focal pendant. The kumihimo project though was not found in the miscellaneous technique section. Perhaps it's because I am a scientist that I noticed. Scientists like to categorize things properly! Seriously though, it was the only criticism, and a mild one at that, for what is my current favorite of their Creative Beading volumes.

Before You Go :

For more tutorials check out my Jewelry Making Tips

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