A Charming Exchange: 25 Jewelry Projects To Create & Shareby Kelly Snelling and Ruth Rae
"Readers will be introduced to techniques and inspiration for creating mixed-media charms and other jewelry items from a selection of twenty-five talented contributing artists. Together, these artists have collaborated to create a stunning charm bracelet that demonstrates techniques such as working with wire, beads, solder, fabric, found objects and more which can be applied to other crafts. In addition to reading about each individual artist's inspiration and creative thought process, readers will learn how to organize art swaps or collaborations of their own."
Kelly Snelling is a self-taught mixed-media artist whose work has been published in Artist Trading Cards Workshop, Somerset Memories (Formerly Legacy), Somerset Studio, Somerset Gallery and the 2007 Top Hat Calendar. Kelly holds a master’s degree from Ohio State University in journalism and telecommunications, and spent several years in the Creative Services office of NFL Properties.
Ruth Rae received her artistic training in metalsmithing and lapidary arts, but has also worked in fiber arts, polymer clay and precious metal clay. Her work can be found in retail shops within California and online at www.Belecia.com."
A Charming Exchange is packed with some of the wildest and innovative jewelry made from very unusual things. It also contains excellent how-to photographs and directions for lots of jewelry making techniques. I loved every page for it's complete unexpectedness. It also has a cool concept of making jewelry as a group, something I never thought of and is now on my "to-do" list. But for now I am taking my inspiration for today's jewelry from this page:
It contains a project titled "Tire-swing Babies" it is a very cool necklace made out of tiny plastic babies, the kind you use for decorations at a baby shower. Well, I didn't have those but what I did have that I thought would make some fun jewelry were some drink mermaids. I spray painted them silver and tried two ways of linking them to a necklace.
This first one I linked a jump ring around the waist and then a smaller jump ring to link it to the ball chain. This one is more floaty and the position of the mermaid can move around. More "swimmy"
This one I linked a small jump ring on each arm and then connected the two with a large jump ring. Then I linked the two ends of chain to the large jump ring independently. This pretty much keeps her floating in one spot.
So if you like making jewelry out of unusual things I bet you will really like this book too.









































































