The Art of Forgotten Things
Amazon Description: Discover a masterpiece that gives new life to found objects in The Art of Forgotten Things. Imagine necklaces and bracelets using one-of-a-kind components that hint at fragments of stories that exist only in the mind, evoking a mysterious past. Author Melanie Doerman will teach you how to take esquisite mementoes from history and make them into meaningful works of wearable art.
 
The Art of Forgotten Things offers a brilliant new take on expressing your story within a jewelry design. Melanie shows how to create delicate beaded frames, clasps, nets, and components with seed beads and combine them with mixed-media elements for jewelry with an evocative look and feel. You’ll also find an extensive techniques section that includes instructions for flat and tubular peyote, right-angle weave, bead netting, bead embroidery, and picot edges and fringes; basic jewelry techniques such as wire wrapping; mixed-media techniques such as foiling; and additional embellishment. Detailed step-by-step instructions are provided for each project.

Beading Artistry For Quilts
Amazon Review: When I first opened Thom Atkins book Beading Artistry For Quilts my jaw dropped faster and lower than a dot-com start-up stock in the 90s on a Monday morning. There are just not enough adjectives to convey the full extent of Mr. Atkins artistry, but I'll try:
 
Vibrant, Colorful, Sparkling: Atkins' luminous palette begins on the cover and does not let up until the final page.
 
Exceptional, Exotic, Exquisite, Thrilling: This is beading fusion like we've rarely seen outside of museums.
 
Incomparable, Unprecedented, Rare, Superlative: Atkins' unique background, skills, and abundant passion result in staggeringly unique artwork.
 
That's just about the photos; the text itself is imbued with Atkins' friendly and humble style. (But back to the photos, I have to point out there are 29 pages (29!!) pages of gallery photos at the end of the book, several with both full and close-up shots.) Atkins also gifts us with a "Bonus Feature" on creating a beaded bezel using cabochons. Throughout, Atkins shares his experience gracefully and enthusiastically; he is clearly an artist of supreme caliber. Somehow he manages to impart a feeling of accessibility and kinship, despite the very advanced level of beading presented here.
 
Instructions, techniques, and tips are plentiful: stretch the thread before beading, know your bead vendor and ask questions about their bead quality, how to make special fringes and picot edge stitches, how to accommodate different hole placements, combining couching with other stitches, how beading is effected by environmental factors, and much, much more. Atkins also freely mentions specific brand names when suggesting various tools and notions, such as Terrifically Tacky Tape 1/2 Inch
 
You might want to know that while Atkins provides a great deal of information about beads and fabric, this is *not* a straight how-to project book. By this I mean there are no project designs with specific step-by-step instructions that will get you from his finished concept to your own look-alike piece. Beading Artistry utilizes more of a generalist "look what you can do" approach, full of wisdom, insight, and inspiration.
 
Prepare to use your own plethora of adjectives when you peruse and study Beading Artistry For Quilts; you might even need a thesaurus.
 
Beautiful.