Non-Fiction Book Reviews

Book Review: Rustic Wrappings

By Sandy Amazeen Aug 22, 2012, 2:21 GMT

Explore a rustic approach to making beautiful jewelry with exciting surface effects. Rustic Wrappings is packed with over 24 wire and art bead jewelry projects and reveals the surprisingly artistic effects of applying items such as salt, vinegar, sawdust, or potato chips, to your copper, silver, brass and steel wire projects--high-end effects with low-tech techniques. Achieving these innovative effects using household products will not only inspire jewelry makers but mixed-media ...more

Add a new dimension to your jewelry through the use of patinas that provide a pleasantly aged look to wire and metalwork. Unlike the harsh, often toxic commercial patinas, Bogert’s new book provides simple formulas using household ingredients to create lovely colored and rusty effects to make your pieces stand out. Included with each patina recipe are a series of photographs showing exactly what results to expect on different metals and where necessary, the differences between treatment for a few hours and overnight. Sea salt, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, even potato chips can yield striking results on copper, brass and steel, especially when combined with beads, stitching techniques and simple wire wrapping in the twenty-five projects shown.

Don’t be confused by the first project “Among Anemone Earrings” which is actually a bangle bracelet, the close-up photography and cookbook style instructions more then make up for that typo. Several patterns like the “Analog Bracelet” are very simple and a few, like the “Chrysanthemum Pendant” are more complex looking yet still well within a beginner’s abilities. Helpful tips, alternate views and nuggets of special care information are sprinkled throughout, providing a wealth of additional information to the clear directions. While the patina formulas are extremely useful and well worth the cost of the book, most experienced jewelers will find the projects better suited to beginners.