Beading in No Time: 50 Step-by-Step Designs for Beautiful Bead Jewelry (Cico Books $24.95) by Linda Peterson is packed full of jewelry projects for the bead lover.
The title of the book relates to the organization of book's projects. There are four project chapters, starting with the first chapter that has projects that should take no more than an hour and progressing to projects in the following chapters which require more time.
Techniques Covered
Though most of the jewelry designs revolve around beads, there are lots of other jewelry components and techniques in here such as resin, wire, fiber, and friendly plastic. Along with discussing some of the basic supplies and tools required, the front section of the text includes 14 jewelry techniques, a few pages about jewelry designing, and a few more pages about selling jewelry. These short sections on designing and selling aren't necessarily in-depth, but they do offer some ideas to think about such as creating jewelry pieces that work best for a person's facial structure and using social media and blogging to sell jewelry on-line.
The techniques illustrated include full-color photographs for each one described. While these techniques at first seemed like an odd assortment (friendly plastic and then fiber?), I could see how a beginner might like to have more than just the usual methods such as securing crimp beads explained. It definitely adds more options than only stringing beads.
The Projects
As I mentioned earlier, the introduction of the book explains that the projects have been divided primarily by the amount of time each design required to construct. For example, the first section is called "Simply Stated" and includes some easy projects such as Lime Candy Earrings using jump rings and a few findings to connect bright green disc-shaped beads to large links; making an elastic cord bracelet, entitled "Basic Black Bracelet," using black crystals and silver bead caps; and dangling some charms and crystal components from a bail and large clasp for the "Handbag Charm" project.
So, yes, many of the projects in this first section look easy to make and are really beautiful; however, I found some that definitely take more than an hour to make if you count waiting for things like resin to dry, so that struck me as a little odd that there were a few resin projects in this section. Granted, once the resin is dried, the rest of the projects would have been quick, but why put it in this section instead of one of the others? In fact, in the section, "Fabulous Focals," there were projects that also could have been done in an hour or less. Ultimately, this made me feel the organization wasn't really jiving with the explanation given in the introduction.
Concluding Thoughts
My only issue with this text is that it is not as focused as it could have been as far as the organization and direction of the book, but that really does not take away from the fact that it has tons of wonderful projects, most of which I think are something I would definitely wear myself. An added bonus is that along with the easy projects there are some more geared towards intermediate level jewelry makers. As a result, those with some jewelry knowledge will find some projects worth doing, and even beginners have a place to start, but as their skills increase, they have a place to continue learning in this book.
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