Bead-Making Lab ─ 52 Explorations for Crafting Beads from Polymer Clay, Plastic, Paper, Stone, Wood, Fiber, and Wire

Fill the year ahead with handcrafted beads that you can make yourself by following tutorials fromBead-Making Lab!

Imagine a year in beads. We're talking 52 handmade varieties--a new bead each week--all handcrafted by you.Bead-Making Lab makes this bevy of bead making possible with instructions for bead designs that run the gamut from sophisticated styles to playful ones.

Bead-Making Lab is organized by material, and single-spread lab sessions (tutorials) for each bead design make the book simple to use. The sessions are brief, accomplishable, and rewarding. Choose from traditional materials like paper mache and polymer clay, or opt for new materials such as resins and recycled bottles and bags (which make surprisingly beautiful beads). Once you've selected your medium, follow the lab session instructions for the bead-making technique of your choice. Try a new technique each week! With how-tos including molding; carving; miniature painting; gluing; drilling beach glass, pebbles, and wood; and creating fiber-arts beads (quilling, quilting, and felting), you have a year of unique projects ahead of you.Bead-Making Lab also offers ideas for stringing and wearing your handmade beads, and there's a gallery tour of contemporary bead artisans' best work, too. Get busy beading, crafters!

Heather Powers is a beadmaker, jewelry designer, and author. Inspired by nature, charmed by small town life, and in love with all things handmade, Heather is the originator of the Art Bead Scene. This interactive blog has the goal of uniting bead artists of all materials and jewelry designers who use art beads in their work. The blog has been published daily since March 2007. Some of its regular features include current events and trends in the bead world, interviews with bead artists and jewelry designers, and reviews of new products, books, and stores that carry art beads.