Craft Book Review - Seed Bead Chic

The generous publishers at GMC sent me another book to review.  Although the book was provided for free, all opinions are my own and I was not told what to write.  The book in question is Seed Bead Chic, which you can see on Amazon here.

This is a beautiful book full of gorgeous projects.  This is definitely not a book for the beginner, some of these projects are pretty complicated.  A few that caught my eye are:

This Art Deco brooch, I think I'll make this one at some point.

This tube necklace.  I had intended to make this, but didn't get round to searching for the tubular material it's strung onto.

This lovely summery piece which I may well make, but I'd probably make it in copper as I'm not a fan of yellow gold.

This lovely bracelet.  This is actually the project I chose to make, but I made it into a necklace.  See below for more details and pictures.

This is another one I intend to make at some point.  I don't like the giraffe print beads much so I need to find a nice alternative.

I decided to make the bejewelled barrel bracelet as a necklace.  It required 2mm Swarovski rounds (as do a lot of the projects in this book).  I did some searching on line and bought some from Mail Order Beads / The Bead Shop Nottingham, not out of loyalty but because they had the best price on Swarovski.  I paired them with white 15/0 seed beads and clear 11/0 seed beads.

The actual necklace is a copper herringbone tube which was really easy to do, though it took a while!  The barrels are stitching in place so they don't all clump together when wearing it, as I'm going to prove in the next photo.  Oh yes, a photo of me.  In fact, my very first selfie!

I love this necklace and have worn it a lot.  The instructions were really clear and very easy to follow, I didn't have any false starts or any moments of "eh?  What does that mean".  Though remember, I do have some experience bead weaving so can't vouch that a beginner would be able to follow the instructions.  The weaves themselves are set out at the beginning of the book with easy to follow diagrams and written instructions.  Overall, I like this book and think it's a great addition to the library of intermediate to advanced bead weavers.

Let's finish off with another selfie:

Product details Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Lark Books,U.S. (7 Dec. 2014) Language: English ISBN-10: 1454708174 ISBN-13: 978-1454708179 Product Dimensions: 28.2 x 21.6 x 0.9 cm Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)