Polymer Clay: Exploring New Techniques And New Materials seems a fascinating book for polymer clay enthusiasts. The projects in the book are specifically chosen to delve into the many creative possibilities in the versatile world of polymer. In doing this, the book offers to expand the reader's skill sets by indeed, exploring new materials and their application. Very neat stuff!
The first section of the book gives an extensive ten pages on polymer clay basic techniques. After explaining the necessary basics of the medium, the authors supply a yummy area that includes color mixing and blends, marbling, metallic effects, embellishments, building armatures, polishing and more. They even go into making a mold. Knowing what you can do with this medium in advance of making projects is a true asset to this book. It allows your own creativity to start dancing from the get go.
Sargeant, Fago and McRee must have had some serious fun in doing this book as evidenced by their first projects in Transforming the Clay. Here they begin using the clay all on its' own. They explore stacking thin layers, translucent clay, metallic clay and how to blend clay colors together. The authors demonstrate all of that with pendant, box and vase projects. Lovely. After each project, this creative team offers variations on the projects. Nice touch.
In the next chapter, Creating the Structure, we get four projects on creating mokume gane, a storyteller doll, a jewelry box and a leaves centerpiece. These projects truly let the reader see the diversity in project potential with polymer. Enhancing the Surface is a very cool next section where you'll learn about how do mosaics, embossing, laminates and even how to do freehand transfers using felt-tipped pens, wow.
As a bonus there's a complete section on Exploring Precious Metal Clay with six projects along with very good instruction on PMC basics so you know how do complete the projects. Fago was a pioneer in precious metal clay and really shows off her amazing skill in the gallery section. You'll see a lot of gorgeous finished pieces here from different artists.
The majority of the how-to information is in the extensive beginning of this book basics although each project has its' own text step-by-step instruction. All in all, Polymer Clay: Exploring New Techniques and New Materials is a real winner in that it has something to offer everyone in spite of their skill level. This book really inspires mountains of creativity!
Lisa Van Herik is an art jeweler and author of Make Wire Beads and Fiberwire Beads and Jewelry. She maintains two websites: http://www.beadifferent.com/ where you can join the mailing list to receive free wire jewelry tutorials, and http://bestwirejewelrymakingbooks.weebly.com/ where you can find more great jewelery making book reviews.
