Sara Richardson is the associate editor for Step by Step Wire Jewelry and Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist.

Recently, we had a community yard sale in our neighborhood. My husband Mike and I went through the house, thinking of stuff that we could

	Princeton wonders why nobody bought all these great books! Photo: Michael Richardson.

put out to make a couple quick bucks. In the piles of old furniture, trinkets, outdated artwork, and unused draperies, we included a bunch of old books.

They were just a bit dusty, and a few were aging with yellowing pages. Mike was anxious to rid himself of the memories of his college calculus and computer programming classes. I pitched in with a couple books that were given to me with written inscriptions by an ex-boyfriend (with those first blank pages now torn out).

So, we put them out for sale. How many did we sell, you ask? Zero. I was shocked. No bites on such great titles as Bridget Jones's Diary, Who Moved My Cheese?, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Now we'll donate them to our local library, but I was amazed. The books are perfectly fine . . . plenty of great stories were passed over.

Instant Self-Gratification
Though the books we sell here at Interweave are of much better quality than some of those books in our yard sale, occasionally you may stumble across one that might have a cover with a bent corner. But that's OK! The value of the information inside is all that really counts, right? It doesn't stop us jewelry makers from opening it and looking at the beautiful projects inside. And, most of the time, we'll be so inspired that we get right to work on making jewelry. Eventually, we completely forget about that bent corner!

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who experiences this: after making the piece of jewelry in the book or a magazine, we

close it and move on to our next creative venture. When we go back to it, we see the dog-ears and the pencil marks we put on the pages ourselves.We see tiny snips of wire in the margin, or a rust stain from the sheet metal we were working with, or a small drip of resin covering up the page number in the corner.  Doesn't that indicate that the book or magazine was well-loved by us and that we took advantage of some great information? Yes, we technically "hurt" the pages ourselves, but we'll know where to find it and remind ourselves how to make it. 

Learn New Jewelry Techniques...and SAVE!
The Hurt Book Sale is going on now in the Interweave Store. It's the perfect time to grab those books you've been longing for such as Wire Style, Create Jewelry: Stones, and Marketing and Selling Your Handmade Jewelry. They might have a one or two flaws, or a little wear and tear from the warehouse, but the savings is passed down directly to you. Check out the great selection here.

It's an old cliché: "Don't judge a book by its cover." In this case, the phrase rings especially true. If you want the best jewelry-making content and inspiration that Interweave has to offer at a good price, don't pay attention to any rips or folds. Just get cracking--creating the beautiful jewelry the books teach you how to make!

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