Bead and Wire Fashion Jewellery

Bead and Wire Fashion Jewellery is written by Jessica Rose, the founder of the London Jewellery School. This book starts with an introduction talking about fashion and looking at how to develop a design and sell your own jewellery. The first two chapters provide a comprehensive, handy guide to the materials, tools and techniques you will need to use for the projects. The majority of the projects in this book are wirework based, focusing on beads. However there are also some on-trend projects that use mixed media, like feathers for a funky look. Each project starts with an introduction including the ‘mood board’ that inspired the design and a little bit of background about the design process.

Bead and Wire Fashion Jewellery gives instructions for making five necklaces, four pairs of earrings, five bracelets and four rings. Every project is clearly explained with lovely photographic illustrations. Each project is graded according to difficulty and Jessica includes a good range of difficulty levels, so there is something for everyone in here. You will also gain plenty of inspiration to help with developing your own fashion designs.

I particularly loved the layout of the book – it felt fresh and appealing. I found the inclusion of the mood boards very inspiring. As a designer myself, I like to see how other designers work. Jessica has some fabulous, yet simple, ideas and it was great to see the inspiration behind them. I also know that Jessica has lectured on running a successful jewellery business, so it was great to see some of this experience going into the book too. I found the projects were explained very clearly and there are definitely a lot of pieces of jewellery that I will be making myself.

If you’re looking for accessible ideas, then I would say that Bead and Wire Fashion Jewellery is just the book to find fashionable projects.