Jewelry making books to start hitting the metal!

Jewelry making books, in my opinion, should have these characteristics for them to be of practical utility:

• simple projects,
• detailed instructions including how, where and why things can go wrong and
• sequential pictures.

Buy these 2 great jewelry making books which have all the characteristics mentioned if you want to actually start making metal jewelry.

The first book is concerned about cold connections, great for people that have no soldering equipment. The second book is for making jewelry when you have a soldering station in your workshop.

Both have great designs and use lots of gemstones!

Let’s start reviewing them one by one

Gollberg, Joanna; (2003); “Making Metal Jewelry: projects, techniques, inspiration”; Lark Books, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.; New York. ISBN: 1-57990-347-9

A fantastic book for newbie’s. The only major jewelry tool used is a flex shaft.

But don’t dismay if you don’t have your lovely Foredom SR Series flex shaft yet. You can always sneak your partner’s or father’s Dremel tool and use your jewelry making bits with it. It doesn’t work quite as well (it has less torque), but to start-off with is fine.

Joanna Gollberg really hit it with this very well accomplished jewlry making book. It includes a thorough section about the basics of jewelry making, with detailed explanations of basic techniques, materials and tools to set you off. It contains beautiful projects with lovely textures and clever use of cold connections.

What I liked most about this book is that if you analyze each project carefully, you’ll get the basic design structure behind each project (how Joanna conceived them design-wise) and with that you’ll have all the resources to take each design and make infinite variations using your own creativity. I don’t mean making iterative copies of it, by no means, but by understanding the “prototype” you can imagine new ways of thinking about designing jewelry and new approaches to make it.

For example, her “Layered Cuff Bracelet” on page 72 is a brilliant example of a simple, practical and easy project to make. It shows you the overall effect of texturing sheet metal, using different colored metals and using tube rivets to hold all the pieces together.

This bracelet is of timeless beauty yet modern. The strips of metal joined to the cuff end with tube rivets and each strip crossing at different heights above the cuff make this one of my favorite projects. I also loved her tips and tricks for making unusual textured finishes on metal; it gave me lots of ideas!

O`Keeffe, Stephen; (2003); “Jewelry Making: tips and tricks of the trade”; Krause Publications. ISBN: 08-73496-50-7

This is one of my first jewelry making books. It has 39 jewelry making projects for all levels of expertise, but especially for beginners.

The book contains detailed pictures following all the step-by-step instructions giving you various alternatives to any one task, which is rare in this type of books. The projects have a simple quality to them that lets you choose any project and really attain it. The photos are all of great quality.

One of the benefits that I found in this book is the content of its first section about “basic techniques”. Only in Oppi´s book, which we reviewed before, have I seen a section about the real basics of metalsmithing. Projects-based books tend to start off with projects without explaining the small but vital techniques that gives rise to any jewelry.

Stephen’s book has 15 full pages showing you the basics of cutting, filing, drilling, forming, dapping, straightening, soldering and finishing.

It’s like a having a jewelry making book about fishing, telling you step-by-step how to hunt for different species but also showing you how to make knots, how to select the correct hook, why there are different baits, how fish attractants are used, etc.

The projects are incredibly simple but very beautiful and wearable. There are loads of gift ideas for family and friends too. I’ve wanted to make the sterling silver hair clip featured in page 59 for a dear friend of mine (former boss), but haven’t managed to do it…

Dover; (2003); "Japanese Crests CD-ROM and Book"; Dover Publications. ISBN: 04-86995-61-5.

Dover electronic clip art books are a great resource for design ideas. All their illustrations and design are copyright free so you’ll have no problem using them in your jewelry.

For the amethyst bead necklace found in the Jewelry Projects section, I used the Japanese Crests book shown.

Just print out the one you want, cut it out and stick it to sheet metal with a thin coat of glue and let it dry thoroughly. Then you can start sawing it.

You can make also silver flower earrings using patterns from this or any other Dover Book, look at this flower earrings project shown here.

Go from Jewelry Making Books back to Beading Books