The Beading Will Continue

This book contains 27 projects with step-by-step instructions for using different types of bead stitches to create jewelry. When I bead, I’m more inclined to use stitches to make patterns than to simply string beads together, so it’s right up my alley. Although I do have most of the basics of the stitches in other reference works, it’s good to look through a new book to get fresh ideas.

As I mentioned, the book introduces new stitches and combinations with each project, so you get a good idea of the crossweave, square, right angle weave, daisy chain, brick, herringbone, and ladder stitches. Additionally, the projects get into making bead ropes and how one goes about that. I can’t say that bead ropes are in my immediate future, but I’ll know how to do them when I get to them.

It’s a good beginner’s book, but it’s also a good book to have to refreshen your inspiration or to pick up new ideas. The one I’m going to try first is to mix seed beads with larger beads in a crossweave stitch. It adds a little depth to the product that I think will work excellently for something I have in mind.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book not only covers not only making necklaces with beads, but also how to make beads from different things such as clay, fabric, and papier-mache. As part of a series, the book focuses on necklaces and the projects include traditional bead stringing coupled with some wire work.

Projects include:

• Papier-Mache bead necklaces.
• Flowering vine necklace made from clay-sculpted flowers and chain.
• Marbled beads made from clay.
• Faux Millefiori (Venetian glass beads) made from clay.
• A necklace incorporating feathers.
• A seed necklace.
• A necklace made with hardware washers and leather thong.

Each project offers a couple of photographic variations on the main project. They really do spark your imagination; I really enjoy most the books that go astray from basic beading techniques.

I do have a couple of notes about the book, though, that are less laudatory:

• Whatever font they chose for it has a little loop that connects the tops of st and ct whenever they appear (in words such as lost and impact, for example, the loop connects the last two letters). That was distracting.
• Individual numbered steps in the projects include more than one action. As an occasional technical writer, I find that irksome. A single action gets its own step. Not
  1. Gather your materials. Mix the paste. Tear up some paper. Wrap the paper around a core bead and apply the paste.

  That’s not a single step.

Still, worth your time and trouble perusing it if you’re looking for some new ideas.

It took me quite some time to get through this book, as you can well tell. Its projects are very elaborate and detailed, with lots of shapes and textures working together. I’ll be honest: I don’t have an eye for these sorts of designs, so I wasn’t too engaged with it. That said, if you’re into that look, this book has a lot of ideas for you.

The projects include a number with stringwork, a multi-strand necklace, numerous earrings, and one using a fabric cord. The other features in the book include some good insights into design, including the use of textures and balance, as well as sidebars on lampwork beading and artist profiles.

I’d better find more books on stitches and woven patterns, since I think that’s my balliwick these days. Maybe I’ll come back to this book in the future, when I’m more advanced.

Although not specific to beading, Rose Diamond’s blog deals with other aspects of professional jewelrymongering.

Here’s my first attempt at an elastic bracelet made with green seed beads:

Click for full size

Marvel at that big knot! I followed the instructions as best I could from JewelryMaking.About.com (blame the carpenter, not the tool), but I had trouble with the knot. I was using too thick of a cord, 1mm, to start with. The hole in the bead could not accommodate the knot. And I ended up gluing the cord to the side of the bead.

When my dear wife humored me and put it on, she noted that the bead always slid to the bottom since the bracelet was loose enough to do so and the focal bead was large enough to warrant it. So another lesson learned: keep bracelets weighted even all the way around.

Well, all that’s wasted once the scissors snaps on this project is a bit of wasted cord and maybe a plastic focal bead. But I learned even from this, a failure.

So I got some punctuation “beads” from the office supply store, and I couldn’t wait to try them out, so we have this:

Click for full size

It’s nothing but a toggle-clasped, seed-beaded, repeating pattern of two black beads, one white bead, two black beads, one white bead, two black beads, punctuation bead. As I suspected, the bend in the wire path inside each punctuation bead makes this one better suited for necklaces than bracelets.

I’m thinking about rubbing some crayons into the punctuation marks so they pop out better and maybe applying acrylic over the top. Does that sound like it would work?

Cyndi Lavin rounds up some beading competitions.

Hey, I’m not ready for that yet, but it’s interesting to see that such things are available.

This book is not a bead jewelry book; it is a book about bead designs, which include using beads to augment clothing and even to make tapestries. That is not to say it’s not worthwhile for a bead jewelry maker to review, since it includes a lot of information about making fringes and whatnot that can be useful in making pendants. And so forth.

The book is forthrightly declared to be a reference book; as such, it mostly does not follow a project format. Instead, it identifies and gives different patterns you can use in your own beading work and gives a gallery of photographs of things using the designs. There is a projects chapter that gives step-by-step instructions for a couple things, however.

So the book focuses on patterns you can use in whatever beading projects you have in mind as well as techniques for cords and fringes, but these books would not be quite the same without step-by-step projects. This book’s projects include:

• A dragon box band
• A fringe for an organdy bag
• A striped bracelet.
• A netting border for a gourd bowl.
• A scissors chatelaine.
• A crochet bracelet and purse.
• A loomwork wall hanging.

And so on. The book suggests a whole world of beading as sewing that escapes the narrow focus of jewelrymaking using beads, but some of the patterns and techniques might come in handy, particularly the fringe strand techniques and the cord making.

Here’s my first project that sort of looks like a real piece of jewelry. It’s a red and black choker with a plastic focal bead:

Click for full size

Here’s how I did it:

1. Measured my beautiful wife’s neck to get appropriate size.
2. Measured twice the measurement in thread plus some to spare.
3. Dropped the bar end of a toggle clasp into the middle of the thread.
4. Using the two needle method, I made a ladder stitch halfway up the remainder of the thread.
5. I pushed the needles through the focal bead.
6. Then I climbed the ladder stitch to the same number of beads as I’d used between the toggle bar and the bead.
7. I added a crimp bead and the toggle clasp ring to the end, tightened and crimped.

Actually, I left out a couple steps. The one I should have done was condition the thread. The one I actually did but didn’t include was untangle and unravel the mess that happens when one strand of one of the threads comes off of the needle and you knot it into a bunch of beads.

But I’m still learning, you know.

I’m not saying that I am not particularly bent artistically, but I almost thought that Art Noveau remade Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” in the 1980s.

Turns out, I was mistaken. Art Noveau was an artistic movement at the turn of the last century featuring natural motifs and rounded curves. This book includes a nice introduction to the movement, a very high level summary of the different media and countries in which it appeared. Then the book goes into some projects inspired by different examples of the art movement.

For example, the projects include:

• A bracelet based on the painting “Libussa” by Vitezlav Karel Masek. Before this book, if you would have asked me about Masek, I would have guessed he played goal for the Nashville Predators.
• Earrings inspired by a Paris Metro station fence.
• A vase based on the painting “The Embrace” by Gustav Klimt. Klimt really isn’t a good hockey name at all.
• A bracelet based on a council room door handle in Bremen City Hall.
• A bracelet based on a Laburnum Lamp by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The projects are quite varied, and as noted above go beyond jewelry. It sparks the imagination of the beginner, or at least me, to see a wide array of techniques and results. Each project includes sidebars of trivia and tips to help you with your wirework or whatnot. Some of the projects really do match their inspirations, but in others I don’t see the influence as clearly. However, I guess the inspiration in each worked enough to get the authors to create some nice designs.