The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Making Metal Jewelry gives readers more than 125 step-by-step instructions and 200 fully illustrated color photos, for various metal jewelry making techniques, including soldering, smithing, stamping, hammering, riveting, and wiring. Readers learn how to work with easily obtainable but beautiful metals to make unique pieces. In this book, readers learn about:
- Setting up an organized, efficient, inexpensive, and safe workspace.
- Buying the right tools for what they want to accomplish.
- The fundamental concepts of working with metal.
- Key fabrication techniques such as moving, piercing, smoothing, and joining.
- How to add embellishments such as gems and found objects.
- Adding surface textures and colors.
- Attaching chains and mechanisms and finishing a piece to perfection.
- Designing and executing truly unique pieces.
Along the way, special sidebars give readers alternate methods for accomplishing various techniques, tear-free ways to correct common mistakes, safety warnings, and more. The book also includes a dozen original project ideas, with access to more projects and video instruction online. Nancy Lee is a self-taught artisan who has been bringing dreams to life in metal since 1998. She is on the faculty of the Indianapolis Art Center as a metalsmithing instructor and manages her own gallery and working studio. She has earned an Indiana Artisan Designation for her jewelry, an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Award, and numerous Indiana State Fair Professional Artist Division awards. Her association as a student at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, led to a month-long Studio Assistantship in 2010. Nancy is Vice President of the Indianapolis Downtown Artist and Dealers Association (IDADA), is past Vice President of the acclaimed TURF Super Bowl Exhibition, and is a member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) and the Midwest Society of Metalsmiths. Author home: Indianapolis, IN.
