Jewelry for the New Romantic: Unexpected Techniques with Crystals and Beading Wire

I purchased this book upon seeing the cover photo and some photos inside the cover. The cover photo was the most eye catching of all and unfortunately I was very dismayed once I opened up the book and read each designs written instructions. Almost every single design begins step #1 with "Cut a comfortable length of" or "On a comfortable length of.." and fails to give an idea of what length of stringing material you will need. Nealay, please define "comfortable length". You will need to waste wire/thread as you learn the projects. This book is not for beginners as the instructions are not easy to follow. You will need to read over repeatedly to get the design correct because the instructions are not conscise but are wordy and it is easy to get confused where you are in the process. Instructions for designs such as Cosmic do not follow normal or traditional bead weaving techniques but almost seem to be made up as you go. The designs are interesting and do give some inspiration but after viewing the pictures I realized I can simply make the same design making up whatever pattern I want to get the same result. The step by step photos are not step by step but show three to four steps in one shot and may be difficult even for intermediate beaders. I do like the idea of taking wire out from its hiding place inside the beads and using it in this new way, but I believe there has to be a better way to describe the patterns and detail the instructions so they don't seem so monotonous. That's it! the book is very monotonous and uninteresting. I am reselling my book on Amazon.

--Unexpected Techniques with Crystals and Beading Wire! You can get an idea how beautiful some of these projects are by the gorgeous project on the cover! The book has the usual first chapters of the basic tools and materials you will be using. Then the FUN STUFF begins with all the projects. They have plenty of written instructions for each project plus illustrations to show you how each step should look. I love the earrings on page 29, on page 35!

I am looking forward to making some of the jewelry.

I didn't find the book to be that interesting,and the projects just didn't seem that great,or that many,for the price,and the hipe the book got. Sorry...but that's my opinion.

there are some interesting designs and i'm sure the unethical people out there will be cranking out tutorials real soon (and claiming the designs as their own).as a whole, it's a good book and seems like it would be easy for beginners and interesting for intermediate/advanced. i don't care for all the deigns in the book, but that's just a personal thing; no one likes everything in any book they buy.i give it 5 stars because i don't feel it's a waste of money and most people will learn something from it.

Nealay has some really cute, neat designs. So different from most beading books.

This is fantastic , hoping to try some of these beautifull technique , Highlly recommened . Saw him on Jewel school . FANTASTIC !!! Bought one more as a gifgt

excellent

It is so refreshing to find a book on using beading wire that leads you on to more complex techniques, more advanced designs and more attractive projects. For me I would have preferred it to have less bead weaving. The whole point so far as I am concerned is to use the simpler techniques for beading wire that can be made in a shorter space of time. However it is possible to modify the designs to do this though inevitably that means taking a little more time to enable me to do this.

At first glance this book has beautiful designs and gorgeous pictures, so I was raring to go as soon as I looked at it. However, even though the author states that the designs are easy for beginners to replicate, I would say that this is not the book for beginners to bead stitching. I am an experienced beader and wire worker but I've not had any experience with bead stitching and I found the instructions in this book to be quite complicated. There are not many diagrams to look at although there are written instructions (which for someone totally inexperienced seem to be written in a different language). The layout of the book is nice and the designs are to die for (if you can master them) and the author is obviously very enthusiastic. For me at the moment this book will have to be a 'coffee table' book until I can figure out how to make the designs, so for this reason I would not recommend to a beginner to bead stitching.

Good and useful book both for beginners and and skilled beaders. Gives a lot of ideas.