Bead Love: Simply Fabulous Jewelry with Big Beautiful Beads

I had to make time to write a review for this WONDERFUL bead book, given the apalling pan of it by the first reviewer. I am a bead stringing enthusiast, with a large beading library, and I am always on the lookout for a bead book with creative, artistic stringing ideas that inspire me. This book fits the bill, and it is one of my very favorites that I look through and use again and again. With the subtitle "Simply Fabulous Jewelry With Beautiful Beads", and the bold necklace with the Southwestern flair shown in the cover photograph, it is clear that this book is not going to contain bead designs for the tentative and faint of heart. If your bead style is the teeny, tiny, 'excuse me for existing' 'don't want to noticed' 'incognito' one, then this is NOT the book for you. If, like me, you are a lover, collector and admirer of the fabulous array of world beads, art beads and natural beads, and you are comfortable going public with your beadjoy and enthusiasm, then this book will give you wonderful ideas. There are necklace designs for all styles--feminine, artsy, ethnic, sleek and modern, vintage, earthy and natural, etc. etc. There is even a very attractive necklace design using netsuke, which are a bold bead collector's dream pendant! This book is about bead LOVE! The section towards the beginning of the book showcasing the beads of several art bead designers will make you salivate, and whet your appetite to create, so I am glad it was included. The first project I tried was the gorgeous necklace photographed on the cover. With this wonderful inspiration, I dug out a nice piece of branch coral and some silver and turquoise, and created my version of it from my own bead stash. I had so much fun with that, that I went on to make another necklace from entirely different beads, but in the same basic style, substituting one of the vintage barrel keys in my collection for the long off-center diagonal of the 'chili pepper' branch coral that is so essential to this design. This book is an EXCELLENT springboard for just such creative ideas to adapt to your own personal stash of beads, rather than going out and trying to find the exact beads pictured, and slavishly following the design illustrated. Very few of the bead books I own inspire me in this way. Though there is the obligatory section in the beginning of this book covering the basic techniques needed for making strung bead necklaces, bracelets and earrings (beading books are always criticized if they omit this), the instructions do not include detailed step-by-step illustrations, so this is probably not the first bead book you should buy if you are a complete beginner--buy it just as soon as you've learned the basics, caught the bead stringing bug, and are searching for great ideas! If you are already a bead collector, and creating and wearing artistic strung bead designs that get noticed and garner compliments gives you pleasure, then this is the bead book you have been looking for