Anodized!: Brilliant Colors & Bold Designs for Aluminum Jewelry (Lark Jewelry Books) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I eagerly ordered this book hoping to learn how to use anodized aluminum in jewelry-making as I have seen only one other slender volume on recycling soda cans for jewelry. I know that Lark publishes many jewelry books and felt confident I would find what I wanted within the pages of Anodized! The author and artist, Clare Stiles, clearly is an expert at using anodized aluminum in jewelry as this is the focus of her career, and the gallery pages contain many original and tempting works. I was disappointed; therefore, to discover that there is simply not enough information on materials and processes in this book to duplicate the author's projects.

In the first chapter there is a section called "How to Anodize" but it refers to machines and a list of chemicals including sulfuric and nitric acids and caustic soda without any real explanation of "how to anodize". The interested reader is urged to "research the process further" and later, to contact a company to do the anodizing work. This is simply infuriating. For the author to then go on to describe how to prepare the metal and hang it in the anodizing solution is rather useless.

The second chapter talks about materials, tools and equipment, the most important of which, for this book, are the colorants for the metal. We are told there are "industrial" inks and dyes some of which are water based and some of which are solvent based and there are certain pens that can also be used. No more detail than that is given, no suppliers are listed and even the photos of the products have the labels turned away so that the reader can't even guess how to acquire the right products. One paragraph is given to "Household dyes and inks" which, of course, are not optimal for the purpose of coloring metal. A list of jewelry making tools is offered with a caveat that technical information on jewelry making will not be given and should be acquired from a list of other Lark publications. Please!

Remaining chapters are given over to metal texturing and coloring techniques that range from using a rolling mill to rubber stamping and silk screening of colors and the use of resists. Precisely one page is given over to color theory, with the token color wheel. The best tidbit was the one page description of how to anneal aluminum after forging it with a hammer. I found all the suggestions and projects for coloring the metal intriguing but without sufficient information on the anodizing process or the various inks and dyes that can be used; the techniques are not really accessible.

I think the publisher underestimated the reader and dumbed down this book too much. The author clearly knows her stuff and could have written much more. I loved the creativity involved in the projects and was particularly inspired by the forged pieces. I just wish I felt like I could actually figure it all out.

I am a jewelry artist and I work with sterling silver, copper, brass and PMC. With the price of silver going so high lately, it was great timing to find this book. Being able to use aluminum and the ability to anodize it so it can be colored really opens a whole new avenue of jewelry making.

When working with this process, health and safety are very important. This book discusses these issues and provides step by step instructions to the anodizing process. The process does not seem too complicated, but does involve in working with toxic chemicals. If you do not feel comfortable doing the anodizing at home, you can still do this craft by purchasing pre-anodized aluminum sheet. Another alternative that the author mentions in the book is to source raw aluminum material and take it to an anodizing company.

The book is divided into sections including: discussion of the various dyes and inks that can be used, tools, various printing methods and finishing. The book goes through many different techniques of working with aluminum. Many of these methods are similar to those used when working with other metals. Then comes the project section. It contains clear instructions for many different projects. The projects are beatiful. Being able to add this kind of bright color to my jewelry is really awesome.

This book is not really geared towards the beginner jewelry maker. Also, I was dissappointed that this book did not include a suppliers list.

I have to agree with other reviewers, there is good info (as much as I read) and wonderful pictures in this book. I got interested and then started looking for the resources/suppliers list....there isn't one. You read in a brief outline on how to anodize your own aluminum, which I dont want to do, but then read you don't have to, you can get pre-anodized aluminum sheet! Really? Where? Try googling it, nothing comes up. Without any resources or suppliers you are just left frustrated. I didn't even finish reading the book, if I can't make anything in it what's the point.......