Japanese Beadwork with Sonoko Nozue: 25 Jewelry Designs from a Master Artist

I've always had a love for Japanese jewelry: it has a sleek and elegant look and no matter what you are wearing, the eye is drawn to the piece. Sonoko Nozue's book Japanese Beadwork with Sonoko Nozue: 25 Jewelry Designs from a Master Artist captures that theme of delicate design and presents projects for beaders of all levels to enjoy. Sonoko Nozue is the author of the Japanese language beading books Mode de Beads and Shiny Shiny. Hisamitsu Hayashi photographed the models wearing the pieces, and his use of mixing black and white with color provided a stunning effect to the book.

Nozue uses a variety of different beads in her jewelry works, including Delicas (cylindrical seed beads), Aiko beads (one-size with 260 different colors), Matsuno beads (glass beads with small holes), and Swaroski crystal beads. Using the same size beads in most of her pieces gives the overall look consistent lines. In the first chapter, she details how to start each stitch and provides instructions to different basic stitches.

Her 25 different jewelry pieces are divided into 5 different categories: Casual; Feminine; Elegant; Noble; and Gorgeous. And, the chapter names are a true reflection of the pieces inside. The Noble chapter includes simple and refined lines with basic colors giving a classy appearance to whatever you happen to wear that day.

I loved all the names to her pieces, too. In the introduction, the editor states that Nozue isn't good at coming up with the titles of the jewelry pieces so her students come up with the names. In any case, with names like "Dripping of the Moon", "Breath of Spring", "Sound of Raindrops", and "Cheerful Midafternoon", it gives me the itch to study and replicate all the pieces, let alone simply wearing them.

Author Info and Book Freebies:

• Sonoko Nozue's webite
• Instructions for the Crystal Rose project (pdf download) from the publisher.

Book Information:

• Japanese Beadwork with Sonoko Nozue: 25 Jewelry Designs from a Master Artist; by Sonoko Nozue
• Lark Crafts; 2012
• ISBN13: 9781454502788
• Hardbound, 128 pages, full color

Disclosure: This book was provided to the author by the publisher. Any opinions are the author's own.

Renee Shelton.