This book, which is a reprint of a British book, is terrific for anyone who is new to beadweaving with seed beads. If you know the basic beadweaving stitches, you can pass on this one. However, I really liked the way it taught the user how to make nice projects easily, even though seed beads aren't their best friends. When I started beadweaving, I thought 11/0 beads looked like dust mites, and could never get them to make anything pretty.You can make pretty projects right off the bat with this book. It gives a precise list of everything you'll need, and bead by bead instructions, and tons of diagrams and pictures to guide you through anything tricky. One feature I found especially helpful was the inclusion of a letter after the number of the beads necessary for a project, like 46 D 3-mm round beads. That means you'll need forty-six 3-mm round beads and they will be referred to as "D" beads throughout the rest of the pattern. This makes it much easier than many other books, because you can pick your own color scheme for each project. Many times, I'm substituting purple for gold or some such thing, and then, when the patterns says purple (because of their own color scheme), I end up messing up the design.Is this an absolute necessity on your bead bookshelf? No, if you already know beadweaving and are simply looking for more project ideas. But, if you are new to seed beads or can't get those dratted patterns in the bead magazines to work for you, this is a perfect way to make nice projects, get used to the standard way of writing bead patterns, and get used to choosing your own colors for a project. (I rarely make any project in the color shown in the magazine.)Two small things: This book is written for a British/Canadian/Australian audience. The spelling is slightly off but no big deal. The book is entirely in metric. You need to get used to that, as bead measurements are entirely metric. In my head, I can think of 4-mm bead, but not one that is 1/7 of an inch.So: great book for newbies, probably totally repetitive for folks who have been doing this for a year or more.
