Making Jewelry with Gemstone Beads Paperback – November 2, 2007

If you enjoy working with gemstone beads, this collection is very inspirational for the beginning bead worker. I've collected a lot of stone but needed inspiration to get busy making some beautiful jewelry. She includes interesting findings in the necklaces as well. The pages are beautifully formatted with clear instructions, interesting information about each gemstone and wonderful pictures. She includes a table listing the attributes of the different types of gemstones. The designs are simple enough that you don't need pictures detailing each step of the design.

This book is amazing! I usually don't buy used books online, but I really wanted this one after seeing a portion of the inside. I was not disappointed in the least bit! Beautiful images, easy to follow directions. You can easily make your own jewelry just by looking at the pictures. Great ideas and inspiration. And I love the images and descriptions of the different gemstones. Love, love, love! Thank you!

Author Barbara Case brings out the beauty of selected gemstones (my favorites to use in my own work) by using beads of vaious sizes, shapes, and types and the book images reflect that. However, the dangles are all laid out (spread apart) to see their components - great, I grant you - but I would have liked to see how they actually look when hung around a neck for that will show the true appeal of the dangles. So good images reflect the beading design, yet in terms of how it may look around your neck is another matter.The chart on pages 10 and 11 is a plus as many 'common' stones (wish more were included) are systematically categorized into the typical sizes of round beads, other common shapes seen in the stone type (important as some stones are not cut in specific ways due to the chemical and structural composition), the relative costs of these stones (from very low to very high -- allows for jewelry designers to better evaluate a sale price if an item is sold and/or giving one an idea as to what they can expect to spend if they wanted to use such a stone in their personal designs), placing the gemstone into the birthstone category, and lastly the various attributes often associated with each stone (e.g. LAPIS = wisdon, truth, awareness and JADE = protection on journeys, luck). Additional information can be gathered on the various stones (e.g. hardness/softness of the stone and recommendations on how to properly utilize it - e.g. some stones are 'softer' than others) in the descriptions on various stones along with designs in the second part of the book -- wish this information would have been in the chart, too. This would come in handy and if such information is all tabled together, it would make a great "mini-poster" to the gemstone designer.Maybe I missed it, but one of the greatest pieces of information when working with gemstones is the weight of some of the stones. This is really important when designing a piece, especially earrings. Also it is important when determing the type of wire, cord, thread to use when designing, for you don't want the necklace to fall apart if the stringing material does not work well with the type of stone used.So the good things - amazing images of the stones and design projects (some of the designs are very different from those seen in other books, which is always a plus when one wants to get out of a design rut), recommendations/tips, tidbits of historical facts regarding the stones and their 'mystical' or 'cultural' value, ranking of difficulty for nearly every design shown, and the decent chart made it a great reference chart. The bad things - lack of info regarding weight of some stones, not including newer products available (published in 2007 so one would have expected a few of the newer innovations to improve jewelry designs e.g. wire guardians), my personal desire to see how the design looked when hung on the neck or ear, and a wish that more of the gemstones used today were included. Therefore, with this being said I would have given the book a 3.5 star rating, but the images pushed it up to a solid 4 in comparison to other like books. I would also recommend this book to BEGINNERS (and even though some designs are ranked above 5, beginners can still do these as the images really provide clarity on how the piece is put together) and TO INTERMEDIATE jewelry designers.

This book is really nice.. it has great pictures and instructions in it on how to make gemstone jewelry. I am just now starting and I am anxious to try some of these designs. I would recommend this book to anyone that needs motivation to get started and design ideas.

Photos are great but most of the text is about the supposed mystical properties of the gemstones, all of it available online. It was hard to find any real information on a page because of the flowery and repetitive descriptions of the stones' legendary status as having magical properties.

The book's content is a solid five and the text is clear, I borrowed a copy from the local library and the text in that looked like it had printed strangely, like the letters were starting to become a double image making it unpleasant to read causing me to check out the Kindle version. In the Kindle version some of the photos of the jewelery, especially the amber droplets necklace are small and the print in some of the sidebars is small and difficult to read thus loosing half a star in the rating. I'm still glad to have this in Kindle version, I can pull it up on my laptop and not have to worry about trying to prop a book open while following instructions. I don't plan on making the projects exactly as shown in the book but use the book for referance and inspiration with the beads I already have.

This book has many beautiful jewelry pieces made with gemstone beads, great ideas for some classic and unusual pieces. Some are easy, some take a little skill, but all are doable, even for a beginner.

This how to book has some much needed information for the designer. Tools wire types and different gems and what they look like. Some great patterns and designs. You'll enjoy tis book. Thanks Vickie