Be Bold Jewelry REVIEWS turns 1 year old this month!
I can hardly believe that a whole year has passed since I started working on this project. It continues to be a labor of love. I hope you all have enjoyed reading the reviews and exploring all the free forums and pattern sites as much as I’ve enjoyed writing and posting them.
Sincerely,
MeganG
The project is a leather and bead bracelet. Instructions can be found here.
Free Project
I hope to start writing more of these in the future, so your comments are appreciated.
Please enjoy!
MG
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Processing and payment is still done by Amazon. Prices are the same.
Please help support the blog by making your purchases from the Be Bold Jewelry REVIEWS store!
Thank you to everyone for your compliments, support, and well wishes. I love hearing from people who have found the site useful.
Sincerely,
MeganG
OK, so I had some time today, and thought, I’ll add a few new links for tutorials. I’m happy to report I added more than just a few! I’ve put a significant dent in my folder of “To-Be-Added” links.
There are now 52 links to free beading tutorials/patterns/projects, 10 sites for free wire wrapping tutorials, 13 links to misc other tutorials. If you include all the forum links I’ve edged past the 100 mark.
But don’t worry, there is still more to be added! I’m hoping to get more glass working tutorial links up soon to celebrate getting more thinfire – time to fire up the kiln!
-M.G.
Hello All,
A recent conversation with a friend turned into a Top 5 list-a-thon, which made me think…hmmm…what are some Top 5 lists I could do for jewelry? So, in addition to my normal reviews, I’m going to start adding the occaisional Top 5 list. Since my friend is a beginning beadweaver (Yeah, this is why my recent fixation on adding links and reviews for beginner resources), I’ll start with a Top 5 list for Beginners.
Regards,
M.G.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve added some new pages to the site. These are still works in progress and I’ll continue to add to them as I have time.
About the Reviewer – just a little bit about me.
Associations and Meetups – I’m compiling a list of jewelry making associations, guilds, societies, and meetups (sites that allow you to form local meetup groups). Although the list leans heavily to the US, there are quite a few from other countries as well. I’m creating different lists for type of groups – beading, glass, metal, etc.
Research Links – so far I just have some links for researching beads. I plan to add links for other jewelry related research soon.
If you have know of any links that should be included on these or any of the other pages please send them to me. The more resources I can provide access to the better!
Until later,
-M.G.
Well, the holidays are finally over. I haven’t had a chance to write any new reviews in the last two weeks, but I did manage to celebrate Christmas a total of 6 times! I’ve been gifted with a variety of new books (mostly beading, but one warm glass) which I plan to review in the upcoming weeks.
Check out the line up: Beaded Collarsby Julia Pretl, Creating Crystal Jewelry with Swarovskiby Laura McCabe, The Exotic Art of Glass Bracelet Forming by Ron Jr and Rocia Bearer (came with graphite tongs and a bracelet form), and I finally have my very own copy of Jamie Cloud Eakin’s Beading with Cabochons. Christmas was good to me this year!
I have also decided it is time I expiremented with some beading software. Years ago I had a program for designing patterns for the loom. It was faster than graphing the design by hand and it could automatically convert jpegs to patterns. My New Year’s resolution is to familiarize myself with the following pieces of software and try a project with each: Beadtool, Bead Creator, Bead Pattern Designer, BeadWizard, Stitch Painter, and Bead Cellar. I started playing around with Beadtool 3 last week. I should have a review in the next month or two. One awesome feature I will mention here briefly are the Palette options which include multiple sizes of Miyuki Delicas, Toho Treasures, and Pony Beads. Although raises the question – who beadweaves with 9mm Pony Beads?
Time to write up my review of Beading with Cabochons!
-M.G.
It’s probably a little cliche to exclaim, “Suppliers and Artists and Links, oh my!” but I’m going to do it anyway:
I hope that wasn’t too painful for anyone.
Moving on to business, I’ve added two new pages to the site: Favorite Suppliers and Favorite Artists. I’ve added just a few resources to the suppliers page as place holders and will add more later. These are all online suppliers that I have personally used and have had positive experiences with. For the artists, these are some I’ve bookmarked. My rationale: if I love looking at their work, maybe you will too. There are other fantastic artists out there as well, and I plan to add them when I have a chance. Some of my links are on a different computer (a good argument for using del.ici.ous) and, of course, there are just artists I haven’t discovered yet.
Along the right side of the site, on every page, you should see a list of jewelry forums and tutorial/pattern sites. Most of these tutorial sites are going to be free/for sale mixed sites. If you hover your cursor over a link, you will get a brief description.
-M.G.
Hello Everyone!
As part of SLA’s 23 ThingsI’m starting a blog. Although they recommend blogging about the experience, there are over a thousand other participants, and I guess I just always have to be different. So I asked myself, “what can I write about that would be of real interest to others?”
I received a new jewelry book (thanks Mom!) just befor starting 23 Thingsand while waxing on to my enduring husband about how fantastically produced it was I realized that reviewing these books and other jewelry making resources was something I would enjoy doing and would be happy to maintain even after completing 23 Things.So that is what I hope to do: write reviews of books, magazines, websites, etc. I’ll try to hunt down the best resources I can and concentrate on those.
I plan to write a new review each week. Each review will rate the book on instruction quality, photo/illustration quality/quantity, and project quality. I’ll also provide an overview and any pictures of jewelry I’ve made using the reviewed item. If there is additional information you would like included in the reviews let me know. Also, feel free to ask me specific questions about the books and I’ll do my best to answer them.
-M.G.
