This book is wonderful, it covers every aspect of dollmaking. If this is your first time making a doll or your 100th you will find new and helpful information in this book. Definatly add this book to your doll making library.

What a fantastic book. I have used it so much as a reference in my dollmaking that I have the pages falling out of my book. Susanna is so encouraging of your own style of dollmaking. Creative impulse just flows from her book.

This book is excellent! She covers everything; sculpting tools, armatures, anatomy, different clays, painting, costuming, wigging and the list goes on. Comments and tips from various doll artists are included with some amazing photographs of their work. The photo's alone are inspiring. Great instruction and a book definately worth having!

This book is so full of good ideas for creating items in perfect scale for a dollhouse that I don't know where to start.

How to make your own tools and formers, making dishes and pots that are more realistically thin-walled than the commercially-available items, mimicking china, a ladies' vanity set, a desk set, baskets, metal, wood, flatware, foods, fireplace tools - even the kitchen sink! Way too many different items to name them all. If I was to be forced to give up all my dollhouse books but one, this would be the one I'd keep.

Excellent intro to using the clays - basic information. Trouble-shooting tips along the way.

And her videos are fabulous, too. :-)

Sue Heaser is a master at making mini accessories. This book is brimming with projects and ideas, whether it's plumbing, pottery or plants. I was eager to begin making minis immediately after first looking through the book and have found that I can apply a lot of the tips Heaser gives to my other non-miniature clay works.

If you have any interest in making small scale polymer clay items, then this book is a must have!

First I like to point out the lack of this book. For all those incredible miniature that shown in this book, the making of the house it self is not shown in this book. That was too bad because when I start to make these miniatures, the items were scattered in my room without a proper place to put. So adding the techniques on how to create the rooms will make this book more than perfect. As of the miniatures it self have incredible resemble with the real items. This book are full with photos, illustrated instruction, easy to follow and the result is amazing! But of course you'll need all the help you can get, by start collecting complete tools, diversion colors and type for the clays & paints. The tools it self are pretty simple to get, which part of it you can get from your own house appliances. Once you make these miniatures, all you need are miniature rooms for a place to exhibit. And you will have heck of a house decoration!

If every general manager in baseball (Ed Lynch, are you reading this! ) was forced to study this book, entire paradigms of baseball lore would suddenly be pushed aside in favor or fresh, rational, and rigorous principles of management. All of the statistics provided in the prospectus are, of course, second to none, but Michael Wolverton's relief ratings (ARP, ARA, etc.) are truly something special. I have always been amazed at how even the most "knowledgable" baseball minds accept simplistic statistics like ERA and saves as valuable appraisals of a relief pitcher's talents. It's as if the baseball gurus have failed to adjust to post-1950 baseball with its growing reliance on bullpens and decreasing reliance on starting pitchers, and the completely different conditions in which relief pitchers work in comparison to their starting compatriots. Yet these same "experts" have accepted without question the notion that a team must have a real "closer" in order to be a contender. Wolverton blasts these assumptions to smithereens with his analyses, and his elaborate calculations, yet pristine conclusions should revolutionize how the later innings of games are viewed. Throw in the authors' passionate defense of wise treatment of young pitchers, their funny yet consistently incisive comments about hundreds of players, their willingness to challenge age-old fallacies like "veteran leadership" and the genuinely historical perspective they bring to the table of baseball debate, and you have one of the most informative and entertaining baseball books I've ever read.

BP debunks myths, explodes fallacies, and takes sabermetrics to a new height. It has an excellent method for evaluating and projecting performance, but many other credible methods can found elsewhere. BP's riches are found in the essays and player commentaries. Its insights will reshape the baseball debate in the coming years. Roster management, pitcher abuse, big markets v. small markets, tools v. skills -- the debates defining our age and the age to come are all discussed fully and insightfully here.

BP readers will in short time find themselves looking at baseball in a much more complex and accurate way. They will find themselves at greater and greater distance from the newsstand knowledge of those who rely on magazines and Baseball Weekly. They'll be better fans for having read BP. No other book provides so much. BP2K is the best value on the market.

Baseball Prospectus is a must-have for any hard-core baseball fan. These guys do a fantastic job of stripping away the nonsense and the myths and really analyzing the facts to come up with some really useful observations. Also, the manner in which they do it is fun, funny and engrossing; never just a cold statistical survey. All fantasy league players should buy this book immediately, but it will be a great read to any fan of the game.

Sarajane Helm's book was a wonderful jump start to my amateur polymer clay artistic creations. Not only is it well written with easy to follow examples, but the pictures are aesthetically pleasing. I hate books where the examples shown are simply not visually appealing enough for me to try. This is not the case with this book. Kudos to the photographer Bobby Grieser.

Each example is created in a way that inspires the reader to use the techniques and to change them to fit the reader's needs. Sarajane really inspires creativity with this book. Also, I found there are some fairly new techniques and methods to try that I have not seen in other polymer clay books.

Simply put, Creating a Polymer Clay Impression is a book that is inspiring for beginners and advanced artists alike. It is well thought out with visually inspiring examples and techniques. It also offers original ideas that I have not seen elsewhere. I recommend this book to anyone.

I'm pretty sure I own every polymer clay book published save those dealing with sculpture, miniatures and doll making. I have read them cover to cover. For years,there were only a scant handful of books dealing with polymer clay,but the last couple of years has seen a near "boom" in new polymer clay books. I have preorder-ed all of them and eagerly awaited their publications.

I intended to write a review of Sarajane Helm's book, "Create a Polymer Clay Impression" when it was initially released and for various reasons didn't get it done. Since then, 6 or 7 new polymer clay books have been released and it seemed like a review in light of all of them would be timely.

I liked SaraJane Helm's book on first reading. It does not follow what has become sort of the formulaic approach of polymer clay books by beginning with a general discussion of polymer clay tools and techniques and following with step-by-step projects. It does indeed have very nice projects with instructions to complete them as well as the standard general information about working with polymer clay. What sets this book apart is that the text is loaded with specific information about materials and techniques polymer clay artists have experimented with, tried and tested since the late 80's or early 90's and have proven good.

The exploration of texturing clay and the use of rubber stamps with clay is especially worth mention - it virtually kicks open doors of creativity to a dimension of polymer clay that other books give scant mention. It switched on a little light bulb in my brain - aha! I can combine texture and other techniues and it doesn't have to be either - or.

There are three or four books in my "polymer clay library" that I find I go back to over and over for both specific information and creative inspiration and "Create a Polymer Clay Impression" is one of those well used books. I endorse it whole-heartedly.

Isn't it exciting when a new idea comes along, when something different pops up?
Texture is an incredible aspect of art because it can be manipulated in so many different ways. It can add all the detail you need to an entire form or add interest to a single component or a piece.
I never really explored texture until I picked up this book. Sarajane Helm shows how any object can be incorporated into a work via an impression. The reader will learn how to create and use molds, different ways to use stamps, and see how texture can make for some truly unique pieces of art.
Other subjects covered are: your clay basics, caning, and using your textured pieces in various applications such as covering boxes and switchplates, assembling jewelry and mosaics (including polymer tile-covered musical instruments).
This is a great book for anyone interested in polymer clay and is looking for truly unique inspiration.

To be honest, I didn't purchase this book to learn how to sculpt animals. I had to have it because of the wonderful techniques presented for sculpting ANY figures. While reading the book, I kept finding myself thinking, "So that's how they do it..."

The only thing that bothers me about this book is that the animals are sculpted in solid colored clays and then painted to achieve their realistic looks. I would much rather sculpt using different colors of clay on the surface instead of paint.

Overall, this is an exciting book to have in my collection. The deer and the frog are among my favorite projects. In addition, Dewey gives very easy instructions (and photos!) on making armatures and piecing together a complex sculpture.

I read somewhere that Katherine is coming out with a book on making fantasy figures... I can't wait for that one!

This is a book for all people who are afraid to start sculpting animals. This teaches it all, and so easily you would think that sculpting is easy. Many really good projects, very good basic instructions about polymer clay, and some really nifty tools to make. A definate must have if you want to learn sculpting.

Well, now that the "Sculpey" craze of a few years back has settled down, artists can settle down, too, & enjoy the many fine books that continue to be published by North Light, Sterling & other companies. Sculptor Katherine Dewey, who has been making, teaching & exhibiting polymer sculpture for years, put her talent & experience into "Creating Life-like Animals in Polymer Clay." So if you're ready to expand your creative field or advance your technique, you're studying with a master in this book. Katherine guides you through all the steps with strong advice that will stay with you, not shortcuts that take out the "art" & leave only the "craft." You'll learn to make ceramic animal pieces that you'll really be pleased to keep, sell, or give as gifts. The greatest rewards from this medium happen when the artist studies it earnestly...Some other fine polymer art books include:

Making Miniature Dolls With Polymer Clay : How to Create and Dress Period Dolls in 1/12 Scale by Sue Heaser

The Polymer Clay Techniques Book by Sue Heaser

How to Make Clay Characters by Maureen Carlson

Family and Friends in Polymer Clay by Maureen Carlson

This effort has been due for a long time. The author has written a wonderful story, and has given the reader a glimpse into the little known world of high voltage linemen. I particularly enjoyed the characters in the book and felt they were interesting, but real. I could picture each of them while the author allowed me to view them through my own eyes. I really enjoy a fun and captivating story that also helps me to visit the world of these linemen. I'll be waiting for another from this author. The illustrations are also outstanding.

LINEHAND is one of the better books I've read this year. It an interesting, informative, and enjoyable of mid-century America and the people who work on the electric power lines. I would recommend it to anyone.

I do not read a lot of books, but I would if I could find more like this one. It kept my attention and I could not set it aside until I read the last page. I even read it the second time and it was even better. Never read any book over like that.

Clay Brown has created (or described) a group of people that I feel I've met myself, and wound them into a spellbinding story that will live with me forever.

The hero, Glade Elliott, shares the spotlight with the old lineman, Mecham, and many of those he meets along the way. I especially liked the wisdom of Cecil Spaudette and I think I know Duke Driscoll personally. I can sure relate to him.

Glade is the kind of a person I could really like, but he's not able to deal with women. Then, who is?

I will wait impatiently for the next book.

It has been said that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. This evokes a hearty laugh or two. But Maude Schuyler Clay's Delta, this land of her black and white photograph collection, bears little humor at all.

Clay, the contributing photographer for The Oxford American (the nearly defunct glossy southern literary magazine) is a Sumner County, Mississippi, native. Back to the Delta to live and work after a decade in New York City, Clay combines landscapes, or the Delta flatscape, with the stark loneliness of the occasional roadside dog. Few humans don the pages of Delta Land.

Mississippi writer Lewis Nordan, a Delta native himself, writes a provocative and interpretive introduction to the book, one that is witty and piercing in its critical and story-like style.

The book's sepia-toned landscapes show the one constant in a region dominated for millennia by the mighty Mississippi River. That constant is erosion. Many of the photos recall decay and loss. Such is the depiction of the Tallahatchie Bridge of Billy Joe McAllister's jump to the depths below.

This coffee table book, a collection of minimalist and postmodern art, promises to deliver a true, honest, dispassionate and yet emphatic view of the Delta for all who read its words and view its pictorial depictions. The book, not far removed from the documentary eye of Walker Evans, is about memory and the hard, melancholic road that memory often takes us. I recommend it for all who love or long for the land it memorializes.

---------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman

Currenting residing in Germany (and England before that), I often think about the Mississippi in which I grew up with mixed emotions. Maude Schuyler Clay's stunning photographs, with their dark aesthetic, render visible some of the emotional landscapes and scenes that I visit occasionally in my dreams (which border on the nightmarish). Her photographs are, in my opinion, meditations on loss, on some truth of the past that slips irrevocably beyond grasp at the moment of its apperception. The artist shows us ash-covered, post-nuclear landscapes whose projection of annihilation is terrifyingly beautiful and profound. As Lewis Nordan's wonderfully written introduction points out, there are no pictures of cotton pickers in this collection of Mississippi images. The subject of these photos is far more interior and complex, inspiring reflection on the passage of time, memory, death, guilt, and the fragility of the human condition.

As a child of this place called the Delta, this was my world. This was home. Ms. Clay has captured it as it was in my childhood - and as it, to some extent, continues to be. The scenes she portrayed were classics. I may not have seen a particular church or bayou, but I have undoubtedly seen its twin. The black-and-white photographs add a timelessness that color could not. These photographs could have been made in the 50's as easily as the 90's. Much remains the same in the Delta today. Delta Land is a must for all who call this place home. Thanks, Ms. Clay. This book is what I was looking for - even though I didn't realize it until I first turned its pages.

As I read this book, I paid closer attention to how the media gave us the news. Mr. Jacobsen has done a tremendous job of realistically portraying what can potentially happen if the wrong people are in power. And who really has all the power? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what was written here is true. That's pretty scary....

As a friend of Mr. Jacobsen, I read his first book, "The Lasko Interview" to support his writing endeavors. I was so impressed and thorougly enjoyed the book, that I anxiously awaited his next installment and "Circle of Seven" didn't disappoint me at all. Mr. Jacobsen continues with many of the same characters and introduces some terrific and interesting new ones. The characters and the storylines all weave together to make a thoroughly enjoyable read. I couldn't put the book down. This book definitely made me think about how the media disseminates information and how appropriate these topics are during this election year. I am also not a Christian and while these characters have their beliefs and their support system to get through challenges, I have to say that the religious tone was not overwhelming to me. Any religious references are explained completely so the reader can fully understand its significance to that particular character. Mr. Jacobsen has written a terrific book that will appeal to anyone who enjoys reading a good mystery.

Hi, I am Clay Jacobsen"s daughter. He does not live in Tn any more he moved to Cammarillo,CA to direct Dr. Laura. But now is off the air. But i read his book and loved it. It is the best novel I read so is his other book "The Lasko Interview". I love his books hope he writes more!

If you are a trained statistician, you will probably love this book. For each major leaguer, it takes his actual numbers and washes out park effects. Then it compares the value (in runs) of the player's production to the league average. There are fielding and pitching "stuff" statistics invented by Baseball Prospectus that attempt to account for all the variables that contribute to performance. For minor leaguers, it calculated "major league equivalencies"--i.e., what numbers the player would have put up if he had played in the majors.

The problem is that the bewildering array of new terms and statistical explanations will mean little to the casual fan. Even an experienced roto player who has a healthy respect for such methods, such as myself, will have an extremely difficult time putting it all together.

Fortunately, the player write-ups are as compelling a reason to buy the book as the statistical analysis. They are hilarious--inventive, creative, and full of oddball references. Baseball Prospectus can be a little too opinionated at times, and a little subjective for a group of people that professes to believe only in the data, but that's part of what makes them so funny. It's unbelievable how many different ways Joe Sheehan & Co. can find to say that a player is worthless.

I stumbled upon the Baseball Prospectus website about a year and a half ago and after reading the articles they frequently publish there, my view of baseball has totally changed. Basically, the BP team laughs in the face of traditional yet very lacking statistics such as batting average, RBIs, saves, wins and losses. They include several mathematicians who have created very comprehensive systems to evaluate batters (equivalent average), starters (Support-Neutral Wins Above Average), and relievers (Adjusted Runs Prevented). While they value the sabermetric approach to baseball, they also provide commentaries on less quantifyable aspects of the game.

While BP is occasionally prone to making sweeping exaggerations regarding a subject, they provide generally objective analysis of baseball in a very entertaining manner. BP 2002 is well-written and contains paragraphs on about 50 players per organization, organization reviews and assorted other articles along with each players translated (meaning adjusted for AAA, AA, etc or parks) statistics. I highly recommend it.

I forgot to mention in my lengthy review below that one of the best properties of Baseball Prospectus 2002 is the humor ... it adds to the readability a lot knowing that some funny and off-the-wall statements crop up in the player comments. I inadvertantly found myself up way past my bedtime recently reading about minor-leagues for the Tigers when I hit this note on Brandon Inge: he "does less damage at the plate than Lara Flynn Boyle". Good stuff. Keep it up, boys.

...I have been going to kids and clay since I was six. There are three things that I would like to say in response... Firstly, it is not true that 99% of kids cannot center a piece of clay. I will admit that it takes practice, but under the instruction of Kevin, I was able to center a medium piece of clay by the time I was 8. Secondly, I do not believe that Kevin's book is giving any false messeges to begin with. Everyone who comes to kids and clay, except for the really young kids, is able to center a piece of clay. It is not as hard as [they] make it sound like. And thirdly, I think that [she] should think about how many kids she has just discouraged from picking up a piece of clay
...

I am a fourteen year old student of Kids n Clay and this book is a great way for kids to learn how to throw and handbuild. Any child can learn to throw with practice and help and this book gives a kid what they need to know to start. From my first days of throwing to today I have grown so much as a potter with practice and this is something any kid with the motivation can do. I highly recommend this book!

I have witnessed what happens at the Kids 'N' Clay Studio, first hand. She is underestimating the abilities of children! Kids from 6 to 16, with instructor supervision, not only center their clay (as shown in the book) but create magnificent pieces.

Nothing that is shown in the book is fabricated, I have seen it first-hand! I don't know what Ms. Cole's agenda is (to sell the coming book, listed in her profile, instead of validating the Kids 'N' Clay book perhaps?), but she is off the mark in saying that kids cannot do everything that is shown in the book. Just ask the 200+ kids that are currently enrolled in Kids 'N' Clay / Berkeley (or, the thousands of alumni!!!).

This book is an inspiration to help children develop, both creatively and helping their maturation process. Discounting the myth that children cannot center and throw clay is solely based on the systems that perpetrates the apprentice system and holds back talented people!

Be it known that Ms. Cole has sent several spiteful, threatening and vitriolic emails to Mr. Nierman in the last few days with no obvious purpose than to try and build herself up at the expense of Mr. Nierman's proven reputation.