Getting Started with Seed Beads

This book is specifically geared for beginners and uses no-nonsense language to explain how to do things in such a manner that it actually WORKS. Great care taken with the instructions and wonderful pictures/diagrams help people (like me) who have never even picked up a tube of beads and a beading needle before, and the projects are interesting enough to keep me going as I learn. I would recommend this book to ANYONE wanting to get started in beading.

The title of this book should really be "Getting Started AND Continuing with Seed Beads!" The book has everything a beginning beader needs to not only get started, but to successfully complete the projects. I'm NOT a beginning beader but I've still found many of the projects to be ones I want to make--and I have. Directions are terrific; diagrams are terrific, and the projects are things you'll actually want to do (well, maybe not the sequined Easter eggs, but hey...that's SO minor and just a matter of personal taste!) The instructions on all the various beading techniques are some of the best I've seen. Wish I'd have had them when *I* started! Life would have been SO much easier! So YES, this is a "gotta have" book! It'll also make a great gift for your favorite beader!

I am an experienced seed beader, but recently was working on a project that required some use of a technique I had never done before (gluing beads to a surface) and as I was figuring out what adhesive to use and in what order to do things, it occurred to me that it would be useful to have a book on the shelf that contained information like this so that I didn't have to spend a bunch of time re-inventing the wheel -- especially when I'm approaching a deadline! When I saw the cute beaded tins in this book, I decided to add it to my library. I have enjoyed looking at all the techniques and projects in the book. I particularly like the introduction to seed beads with its great explanation of the different sizes, including the difference between Czech and Japanese beads. The ideas about storing beads and organizing the workspace so beads aren't jumping all over the place would have helped me out when I was getting started with seed beads. This book is good looking and useful. What more could you ask?

In my opinion, this is the very best book for a beginning seed beader. It has clear directions and great glossy photos. I had so much fun with the bracelets, that made way too many and am now selling them at two shops. After beading with crystals, gem stones and hematite, I find seed beading much more interesting. The next step will be embroidering with seed beads.

I have just started seed beading. It's a new thing for me, although I understand how to make other kinds of jewelry. Frankly, I don't even think it matters if I did know how to make ANY other sort of jewelry with this sleekly written, brightly photographed, appealing book by one of the most well-known seed beaders in the community, Dustin Wedekind. I have admired many of his projects in Beadwork Magazine for years. Admittedly, in Getting Started with Seed Beads, you don't get the incredibly elaborate and intricately beaded work which the author creates on a regular basis elsewhere--all those fabulous and magnificent pieces-- here, in this book. That is intentional, however: this book is to help YOU get started. You get every type of basic stitch which you might want to try, in a cheerful and colorful layout, with no fuss and no messy photos. It is easy to get confused when you are first learning to seed bead (Take it from me, first hand!). Staring at big piles of beads all over the place clogging up the photos on book pages makes it worse. Thank heavens this book takes pity upon us and leaves the pages clean and clear and appealing. The projects looks good and the colors are brilliant and charming. The early projects in the book which I liked were the glue projects, where you decorate tin boxes wth beads, an enchanting paisley pin, something lacy called a Green Diamond Ribonette which has lots of uses--bracelet, lariat, or belt, Belted Bricky Balls which look more challenging than most of the projects but pretty enough to be worth trying, and the great Twisted Cable Bracelets at the end of the book-I already know the basic stich for that one--hooray! I am glad Dustin explained the many types of beads at the beginning and how to use sequins as well. I feel much more comfortable with the whole concept of seed beading as a whole. This is a very worthwhile book which I have enjoyed reading, will use and refer to, and I am glad I bought!