101 Wire Earrings is written by Step by Step Beads editor Denise Peck and published by Interweave Press.
The book covers basic wire earrings. It starts with a wire primer and a great table of gauges for basic wire shapes, goes into the tools you'll use to create the projects in the book, and into the construction methods.
The construction methods was where I started getting excited. It goes past basic wire wrapping skills into shaping with hammers and piercing wire. The basic techniques instruction isn't skimped on either, so if you haven't learned how to make a nice neat wrapped loop yet, you'll find good instructions here.
The projects are simple stylized shapes for the most part. If you're looking for instructions for the swirly style of wire work, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for nice wearable elegant shapes, this book has them.
Most of the earrings have handmade earring hooks, or the hooks are part of the design, which I like a lot, and all the projects with beads have bead types that should be easy to find at your local bead shop or online. Nothing too exotic or very expensive, and also, most of the wire used is standard gauges and types.
It's a great book for beginners, or for people who are looking for fairly instant gratification and maybe a new way of thinking of wire shapes for earring design. Also, a lot of the earring wires are in uncommon shapes that may be perfect for a pair of seed bead earrings you are making instead of using commercial earring wires.
My personal favorites in the book are the Marquis shaped earrings on page 35 which remind me strongly of the sorts of earrings my mother use to wear, and I love the great shape of the earring wires on the Primitive Wheels earring design on page 63.