PICTURE BEADED EARRINGS FOR BEGINNERS: WITH EASY, SIMPLE STEP-BY-STEP  FOLLOW-ALONG INSTRUCTIONS. Written and Illustrated by Starr Steil. Liberty, UT: Eagle's View Publishing Company (6756 North Fork Road, 84310 [801] 393-4555), 1996. Paperbound.  80 Pp. ISBN Number 0-943604-48-6. $9.95. “Picture Beaded Earrings for Beginners” contains 10 pages of detailed instruction for the two-needle brick-stitch technique used to create the popular diamond-shaped beaded earrings and pins often seen at craft shows and pow wows. The book is composed of 61 computer-generated black and white designs for use with this technique and includes clear color photographs of 31 of these. Examples of the most-interesting designs include “coral snake”, “crab”, “dream-keeper”, “pirate” and “turtle”. More simplistic designs include “anchor”, “cherries”, and “duck”. The complexity of the design is, of course, directly correlated with the length of the base row and the degree of skill which is required for each project. Although my choice of designs would have been considerably different, “Picture Beaded Earrings for Beginners” offers the beginning beader a relatively inexpensive easy-to-follow how-to manual. The patterns are excellently illustrated but I encountered some problems with discerning between the more subtle shades of beads as the technique used to illustrate the colors is limited to black, white, or a letter coding the appropriate color for each bead. It would be time-well-spent to color in the patterns prior to beginning each project. Anita Cheek Moon, Member Reviewers’ Consortium
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