Thursday 4 February 2016

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

5 comments:

Rachel said...

Some of those projects look truly stunning. Including your necklace!

Christine said...

Fabulous necklace, that looks like a really good book

Jane said...

love the look of that brooch, look forward to seeing your version, well done on the necklace

Sarah in Stitches said...

Lovely necklace! :D

Samantha said...

Your selfies are poor, I can't even see your pout!!