With this gloriously photographed and illustrated manual at hand, beaders can create awe-inspiring jewelry. It's the only current, comprehensive guide to working with cabochons--a flat piece of rock or mineral--and it covers all the basics, along with a range of new creative techniques and hot trends. Find out which tools and materials to use, which beads work best, and how to wrap them round the stones. Craft turned, pointed, twisted, brick stitch, ruffled, or scalloped edges, or add decorative fringe. For something dramatic, combine more than one cabochon in a single piece. Or, instead of natural stone, use dichroic glass or other found objects. Make a glittering brooch, funky bracelets, a wearable art necklace, and other showstoppers.
With the joy of beading spreading, it's odd that no one artist has chosen to focus on a singular type of beading technique. Now, California artist Eakin takes the cabochon--a jewel or bead with a flat back and smooth dome surface--as her sole subject. In fact, it yields much more robust content that one might think at first. Tools and materials, as expected, resemble generic beading equipment, but the techniques differ in process and complexity. Framing the bead alone requires mastery of six steps; then edging can assume a variety of styles, from plane-raw to scalloped. Eakin uses a host of sidebars to encourage experimentation and includes 11 well--photographed projects with good instructions (an oval solitaire rhodonite bracelet, for one, with others featuring semiprecious gems such as jasper, onyx, agate, Malaysian jade, and tigereye). Barbara Jacobs
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