Mixed Metals: Creating Contemporary Jewelry with Silver, Gold, Copper, Brass, and More

Description

Mix up your jewelry repertoire! Create fabulous designs featuring a variety of metal beads, charms, chains and findings including silver, gold, and base metals. The editors of Stringing and Beadwork magazines show off their design skills with 30 unique projects, ranging from necklaces, bracelets, and earrings that incorporate various kinds of metals such as silver, gold, copper, brass, PMC, and more. Projects are constructed using basic stringing and wireworking techniques that are accessible to beginners, while the boutique-style designs will captivate the more experienced beader. Mixed Metals begins with a detailed how-to technique section covering a variety of jewelry basics. Techniques for distressing metal, such as using liver of sulfur, other patinas, and hammering, are included. Background information is given on each type of metal, from common properties to shopping tips to care and cleaning. Then 30 projects with detailed instructions show creative ways to use silver, gold, and base metals in jewelry designs-as well as ideas for mixing metals and using faux metals. Most metal jewelry books focus on making the metal components either with PMC, wireworking, or metalsmithing. Mixed Metals is so much easier, focusing on making jewelry with pre-made metal beads, charms, chain, and components combined with accent beads using simple stringing and wireworking techniques. No metalworking required!

Danielle Fox is the editor of Stringing magazine and author of Simply Modern Jewelry: Designs from the editor of Stringing magazine. Prior to working at Interweave Press, she was an editor at House Beautiful magazine in New York City and an editor at Colorado Homes & Lifestyles magazine in Englewood, Colorado. She has done freelance writing for The Denver Post, The Boulder Daily Camera, Natural Home magazine, Footwear News, and Boulder magazine. Danielle lives in Longmont, Colorado. Melinda Barta is managing editor of Beadwork and Stringing magazines and the former projects editor of PieceWork magazine. She has a BFA degree in fiber arts and a minor in apparel design from Colorado State University and is the author of Hip to Stitch (Interweave). She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

This book is all about making jewelry with metal items, and finding out handy facts about the metals themselves. There are several projects to make up, and plenty of useful knowledge for any keen jewelry maker. It is not easy to make jewelry without using some metals, but this book gives you a chance to see how they can really come into their own in some attractive pieces. Best of all, it is a fun way of learning about the various metals before putting them through their paces, and discovering how they behave, where they come from, what forms they come in etc. The book is handsomely illustrated with large photographs of the projects (no staged diagrams but they are not advanced pieces) and some nifty clipart arabesques to make it look more attractive, on the coffee table perhaps. At the back is an illustrated list of other materials used in jewelry making, a guide to bead shapes and sizes, all about pliers and other useful facts. It is a not a beginner's book but more aimed at the intermediate beader who has mastered the basics and wants to learn more.-Myshelf.com