Pretty Little Things: Collage Jewelry, Trinkets and Keepsakes
by Sally Jean Alexander
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sally Jean AlexanderEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-08
ISBN: 1581808429
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: North Light Books
Book Reviews of Pretty Little Things: Collage Jewelry, Trinkets and Keepsakes
Book Review: Did this book have an editor?
Summary: 1 Stars
Numerous typographical errors aside, the author's self-congratulatory tone throughout should have been held in check by her editor. Some fact-checking might have been done as well. The author claims to have invented collage charms. On her website, she claims to be the queen of collage charms. Please. People have been making these in one form or another since the 1980's. Even I was making and selling very similar soldered microscope slide charms and glass glob charms in my shop in the mid 1980's, and can hardly take credit for inventing them -- they were ubiquitous even then, when the author was, according to her own bio, still selling real estate. The book is visually pretty, but the directions for the projects are inconsistent, ranging from adequate to flippant (the collage instructions), to inadequate and downright dangerous (the soldering instructions). Fortunately, free instructions for every technique in this book are widely available all over the internet as well as in the many good collage books and magazines available just about everywhere. And I think most people who are going to attempt soldering for the first time will realize immediately that there are serious gaps in the soldering instructions in this book. Let's hope so, anyway.
If you enjoy being talked down to, you will enjoy this book very much. The author maintains a tone which indicates she believes her audience knows nothing, has nothing, and she is here to enlighten us. She tells us to put an old, comfortable chair in our studios, for example -- what an amazing new idea! -- and takes a tone which indicates she believes her studio is nicer than anyone else's will ever be. In her paragraph in the recent tenth anniversary issue of Somerset Studio she continues in the same vein, though the other authors cited used their space for more constructive and less self-focused purposes. A quick look at the Pretty Organized set on Flickr should assure her that there are a great many of us with beautiful, personal, well-organized places to make art, and yes, some of us even thought to add fairy lights and comfortable seating -- long ago -- though it might not have occurred to us that this anything to write a chapter in a book about. It's what artists have always done. It's not a contest.
I'm not being picky here -- what's annoying is the consistent assertions and self-aggrandizing remarks and I'm-so-cute-in-my-bunny-slippers kind of thing that takes up so much space in the book which could have been put to better use. It's the page after page accretion of these repeated off-the-wall and irrelevant remarks that becomes so irritating and makes the text pretty much unreadable after several pages of this. A good editor would have made this a much stronger book if she could have guided this apparently first-time writer into a friendlier and less self-absorbed way of writing.
Thank goodness, the rest of the collage and altered arts universe is blessedly free of this type of territory-marking, -- so far at least -- but one gets the idea that the paper arts and collage market is expanding so rapidly, that anybody with a reasonable body of work and the free time available to write a book can get it published without too much editorial review. In all fairness to all the other writers in this field, however, it must be noted that each of the other authors writes clearly, gives generously of their very detailed instructions, and manages to write great books and magazine articles without letting their egos get in the way of the text.
The text of the book is certainly irritating, but the pictures are good eye candy. The consistent "look" of the book with its beautiful aqua color scheme is well done. I'm just sorry I paid full price for the book at a retail bookstore. If I'd been patient and bought it for less on Amazon, I would perhaps judge it a little less harshly, but the full retail price is an awful lot to pay to read this author's love letter to herself.
Summary of Pretty Little Things: Collage Jewelry, Trinkets and Keepsakes
Whimsical and Elegant Projects from Well-Known Collage Artist Sally Jean Alexander
With Pretty Little Things, readers will find collage projects that exhibit a playful air and a sense of magic. The 27 projects and 30 variations feature vintage ephemera soldered within glass, for finished works that tell a romantic or whimsical story. All exhibit Sally Jean Alexander?s signature style - a style that brings new life to antique papers, vintage photographs, found projects, scavenged text, and more.
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