Book Review: Beautiful Leather Jewelry

When Kalmbach Publishing sent this book for my perusal, I wasn't really sure I would like it. My idea of using leather is 1mm or 2mm cord. Usually for hanging a focal bead. However, after looking through Beautiful Leather Jewelry by Melissa Cable, I think I am convinced otherwise. 

The book starts out with a section on Basics for Leatherworking. Subdivided further into 

Leather: in which you learn about the types of leather, types of tanning, weight, and how to source leather. 

Tools: which covers cutting, piercing, texturing, and setting tools and how to sharpen. Included is alternates in sewing or metal work when an equivalent exists. 

Hardware: including how to do snaps, eyelets, rivets, spots and screw posts. 

Finishing: includes a plethora of options for how to finish endings of cord and flat strap

Special Effects: dyes, paints, edge coats, distressing,  and sealants.

Preparing your Workspace: a chart that helps you figure out the basics of what you need to prevent being overwhelmed by all the choices on the previous pages. 

The next section is called Making Leather Jewelry, which starts out with a "warm-up" project for making a basic cuff. It goes over cutting, then embossing/texturing, dyeing, applying a secondary color,  finishing and piercing. After doing all the steps, you should be ready to make anything else in the book. 

The project section contains lots of wrist candy in the form of cuffs, bangles and bracelets. However, there are also pendants, necklaces and earrings. Some of the designs for the wrist include design variations for ears and necks.

Here are a few of the projects included in the book (please ignore my horrible photos of the book...taken with my phone using regular fluorescent lighting then processed through Instagram)

This one uses faux bone too!

But my absolute favorite part of the book is the last section that teaches how to make leather beads. I adore the leather capsule beads! In addition to the capsule beads, you will learn how to make a leather embellished wooden bead, leather spool bead, rolled leather column bead, and a leather panel bead. 

Once you learn how to make the beads, there are 5 jewelry projects for using your leather beads. 

Here are a couple of the projects in the leather beads section. The first one is my personal favorite in the entire book

 This one uses a few different leather bead styles and is super fun

 

If you are looking to add leather to your repertoire of materials and techniques for jewelry making, this book seems to be a pretty comprehensive source, yet tries to help you from going overboard buying every tool and supply. (Although, if you do, that would be considered totally normal in our world...lol!)

-Jen Cameron

Glass Addictions

Book Review: Metal Jewelry in Bloom

 

Kalmbach Publishing sent me Metal Jewelry in Bloom by Melissa Cable to review. I was very intrigued to see how the subject was handled and not very certain this book was something I would use. If you've ever looked at my work, I don't really use a flower motif very often. And when I do, it's more an abstract version of a flower....not literal.

I will just give away the verdict first. I LOVE this book. I think I've read through it at least twice and thumbed it many more times than that in the two weeks I've had it. I will explain why in detail so you can decide if this is a book you want to add to your collection.

The intro explains how the quest to create flowers from sheet metal began. It's a very sweet story and I won't give the entire thing away, but Cable's quest to come up with a method to make any flower out of metal with a minimum of tools, without a saw, and easy enough for just about anyone was the result.

Chapter 1 covers flower fundamentals: tools and supplies (Cable separates these into two categories of necessary and nice to have, but not necessary.) Choosing petal count,

Determining petal shape, applying petal texture, adding petal edge dimension,

 

Embellishing the petal surface, forming the petal center, riveting, and adding color. Just listing what's contained in chapter 1 probably does not fully convey the treasure of information contained in these pages. Trust me, you will be amazed.

Chapter 2 covers how to create 15 different flowers with a variety of petal numbers and shapes.

Chapter 3 includes advanced techniques for flowers and foliage including crushed flowers like wisteria, tube flowers like fuchsia, various leaf, branch and vine techniques.

Chapter 4 contains projects for all those flowers you will be making. And BONUS, it includes working with leather and lots of info on working with faux bone...shaping, cutting, coloring, etc.

Chapter 4 also provides a two page spread of templates for flowers of 3-7 petals in six sizes ranging 3/4" to 2 1/4"

Whether you use flowers in your work or not, this book contains so much good info that you could apply to other sculptural shapes with a minimum of tools.

Until next time,

Jen Cameron

-Glass Addictions

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