The Encyclopedia of Wire Jewellery Techniques is quite a nice book but it’s not a complete encyclopedia of wire jewelry techniques. It does provide all manner of basic wire and wire and bead jewelry techniques but most of the more advanced wire weaving techniques are absent. You should know this before you purchase. This is a particularly good book for someone new to wire art jewelry who wants to integrate wire and beads. Having said all that, this is still a good, solid beginner’s book.

The book starts out with a short Tools and Materials section followed by Core Techniques. This chapter provides information on essentials like making loops and findings and ear wires. If you’re a complete novice, this chapter will help you learn how to hold your tools and manipulate the wire sufficiently to start connecting beads and assembling some early jewelry pieces.

Next, the book moves onto Decorative Shapes and Spacers which should lead the beginner into gaining more control over wire. Making Shapes has good illustration to further help you master your wire. There’s also a short section on using a jig which is nice and certainly good for beginners to learn about. For those of you who don’t know, a jig is a small tool that allows you to make repeat identical wire shapes saving time and ensuring fast duplication of wire shapes.

We’re lead next into Simple Decorative Chains which starts out with simple, repetitive element kinds of chains and leads right into chain maille chains both flat and round. This section is well built up in terms of projects and starts providing some more challenging projects.

Decorating Beads and Stones follows with a large assortment of options. While using thicker gauge wires might improve the appeal of some of these decorative options, the reader will still be left with plenty of inspiration. This is followed by decorating donuts, coiling around beads, advanced wrapping techniques and how to encase a marble in wire.

The book shifts into Knitting and crochet techniques at this point and this section is well done. Moving on to Twisting techniques, constructing with wire, Simple techniques, Bracelets and Bangles all add further skill enhancement. Along with all that, this section provides information on making rings and filling wire shapes with beads.

A final chapter called, Towards Silversmithing, is a nice treat and provides information on soldering, patination (coloring the wire), annealing (heating), forging (hammering) and fusing (melting metal together). This section will be most helpful for those choosing to further extend their art jewelry skills.

The book finishes with an 18 page Gallery Section offering some additional inspiration and challenge to the novice wire worker.

All in all, The Encyclopedia of Wire Jewellery Techniques is a valuable book for beginners as I said earlier. It is well illustrated and the step-by-step photos are well done and extremely helpful. While more advanced techniques like coiling, braiding, weaving wire and other textile techniques aren’t included, there are other good books addressing those aspects of wire jewelry making. So, again, if you’re a beginner, this book has much to offer.

Author Bio: Lisa Van Herik is an art jeweler and author of Make Wire Beads and Fiberwire Beads and Jewelry. She maintains three websites: http://www.beadifferent.com/ where you can join the mailing list to receive free wire jewelry tutorials, www.wovenwirestudio where you can view exhibit work and www.bestwirejewelrymakingbooks.weebly.com where you can find more great jewelery making book reviews.

Category: Arts and Crafts
Keywords: wire,wire beads,wire jewelry,jewelry,make,how to,how to make