Bead Fantasies: Beautiful, Easy-to-Make Jewelry

by Takako Samejima

71 fantastic jewelry projects requiring only the basics beading skills.|Jewelry artist Takako Samejima specializes in bead jewelry, and has been working with beads since she was a child. Her designs, which combine different types, shapes, and sizes of beads, have won acclaim for their beauty
and originality. BEAD FANTASIES features over seventy of her most original and dazzling designs including necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, brooches, hair ornaments, cell phone straps and eyeglass chains.

Each design includes detailed instructions for creating the jewelry, supplemented by small color photographs and detailed color drawings. For the novice, BEAD FANTASIES also includes descriptions of the beads used to make the jewelry, beading supplies, and some lessons covering basic bead-stringing,
weaving and finishing techniques.

Genres: Crafts, Beading, Jewellery, Nonfiction

84 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2003

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book! Gorgeous patterns for making outstanding jewelry which I love! She incorporates Swarovski Crystals, which I LOVE and drool over, into all her pieces. I do find following her patterns in this book a bit difficult. They are diagrams to follow with some wording, but I find it hard to follow. I made a butterfly pendant, and it took several tries before I could master it. I finally did master it, and now the trick is to pick 'just the right colors' to make it divine!
The author has spent a good part of her life devoted to making jewelry. Gorgeous jewelry. I am very glad she wrote this book and shared her love of it with us.
This book is literally falling apart, I have used it so much! I highly recommend this book to other people who like to make stunning pieces of jewelry. You cannot go wrong with this book. This is a book you will want to keep in your library forever and refer back to often. There are still many pieces left I want to make! This is by far one of the best jewelry/pattern book I own. I would have given it a 5-star rating, however, as I stated above, it is a little difficult to follow the directions at times. If it were a little easier, I would definitely give it a 5-star!

[Georgene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the projects in this book are a bit dated, but there's enough good ones to make a header happy. All the projects are for jewelry. I did not see any mention of this in the instructions, but many of projects involving bead weaving should have the thread doubled to help keep the end product in the proper shape.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clear instructions, pretty projects, beautiful photos.