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Julie Ashford
Spellbound Bead
Co Publishing (distributed in the UK by Search Press)
23 March 2017/ ISBN 9780956503084
How-To Books/Beadwork
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
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Let your Christmas
tree really sparkle this year with the contents of this book.
Whatever your level of expertise, you can transform a plain
bauble into a glorious, sparkling creation, and make some fun
festive jewelry too.
I haven’t seen the first two books in this series, but
was certainly impressed with this one. A large format book in
full color, it’s filled with beautiful beaded baubles,
and some of the best, most foolproof instructions and diagrams
you will find anywhere. I can testify to this because I learnt
beadwork by making up kits produced by this company, and went
from a total novice to selling projects to magazines in the
space of a few months. The diagrams are in color, and there
are plenty of them per project covering every step with simple,
easy to understand captions. There are also plenty of large
format photographs showing the finished items, mostly in situ
on the tree. Projects start simple, working up to more advanced
pieces. Before all that is a short section on beads and tools,
basic instructions for the various stitches, and other useful
information such as starting a new thread, dealing with knots
and finishing off. If your bauble is not exactly the same size
as the one used, there are ways of getting around this, and
everything in the book is available from Spellbound themselves,
making shopping easy. Not all the decorations are bauble based,
there are angels and stars, a beaded wreath, and some fun earrings
shaped like presents, stockings, fir trees and reindeer heads.
The baubles are decorated with snowflakes, butterflies, crowns
(love this one), stars, icicles and more, while two of them
are transformed into a Christmas pudding, and, my favorite,
the owl. All this is possible by working with only a few types
of easily available beads such as seed beads, fire polished
faceted beads, and bugle beads, as well as some of the new multi-holed
varieties. Pardon the pun, but this certainly had me spellbound,
and is a great way of learning offloom stitches for other applications,
as well as adding to the glory of your holiday décor.
If you cannot find a good range of beading materials locally
visit www.searchpress.com for a list of suppliers.
www.spellboundbead.co.uk/ sells everything you require
including project packs for some of the items in this book.
They ship worldwide.
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| UK Reviewer: Rachel
Hyde's work can be found in The Bead Magazine, Making Jewellery
and Craftsuprint. |
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