Clay Books

This book is of the style that McCreight has become associated with. For good or bad, Tim's books are either hated or loved. That is just the way it is. This book was published in what could be called the dark ages of the metal clay movement. It is truly a beginners book. In the sense it is for beginners and it was at the beginning of metal clay. It covers one brand of the two major players in the production of precious metal powders in a clay binder/carrier. The projects are simple, small and easy. As they should be for new people and a new medium. I can not judge the projects merit, because as with most things. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When you open it up it will lay flat on a table. The project pictures should be larger. As the PMC title is not only a descriptive generic nomenclature along with a trademark. It does cover the basics of working with the clay of both types. The tips are as always good to know. the tools are of the type that can be constructed by anybody with little handy work skills or tools. It touches the surface of a new material and what the possibilities it holds. I own it.

I confess straight up to being a McCreight fan so maybe I am biased. However I have found his book to be one of the best to give my students. It is incredibly clear and consice. It is perfect for the person starting out in silver clay. Sure the glossy photos are missing, rather hand drawn step by steps, but you can follow easily. With 50 projects, there is ample opportunity for the beginner to find something that appeals and to gain confidence with this medium. Part Two is fabulous, excellent technical tips on a host of items, rehydrating, extruding, carving, ring sizing, making bails, use of patinas, and loads more. Part Three gives you the added bonus of How to make your own tools - and therefore save a few dollars. Being spiral bound is a bonus, always stays open. I recommend three books to my clay students, this is one of them, ( the other two - CeCe Wire and Sherri Haab.)A must for your library.

Tim McCreight is the PMC guru and this book is almost a text book.

Exceptionally well laid out with the different sections, projects, techniques and tools. As a new user of PMC I have found the book to be a great guide as I work my way through the techniques of PMC.

Very well written and illustrated.

I love this book as a reference, it is written very clearly and easy to understand. Very well organized also. If you are in to PMC I would highly recommend this book.

I have never been more dissappointed in a how-to book. All the instructions are drawings that look like they were done by children. There are few photos and they are mostly tiny black and white and fuzzy. This book is not helpful at all. I am sorry I purchased it and don't recommed it for any level of experience. Save your money.

I am a mother of two sons, ages 9 and 3. We read this book for eldest son's book club. He enjoyed it and asked to read "just one more chapter" constantly. I personally thought it was drawn out too long. The story of a boy who learns to love and give love through the setting of being abandoned to an island habitated by wild dogs, sheep dogs (and sheep). There aren't any fowl words, suggestive scenes or common crud that too often shows up in children's literature so I am thankful for this book. Over all I give it a 5 stars because it's clean fun, suspenceful reading that grabbed my childrens interest.

the boy who spoke dog was a very adventurist book. and it is a story of partnership and friend ship i could not stop reading it!!!! i highly recomend that you read this book.

WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This book is very very sad!!!
I do not want to give away to much, but don't say that I didin't warn you!The begining is sad but it is made up for in the end...well, most of it anyway.
In summery, there is a boy named Jack and he is a captan boy on a ship (I can't think of it's name) that crashes onto an islend with lots of sheep- dogs and sheep.
It also has a forest with lots of "fangos*" witch are a therat to the dogs and sheep.
The boy doesent understand the dogs at first but in the sad ending he does.

* Fangos are wild dogs that live in the forest.

Truly disappointing. This book, though well-intentioned, falls short of what I find to be compelling YA writing. There is a sense of illogic in this book and "over-writing" in many of the scenes within.

Relating the tale of a boy tossed from a ship during a storm (why?), THE BOY WHO SPOKE DOG is meant to be the story of the boy, Jack, and the dog Moxie. The intention is that the chapters alternate between Boy chapter and Dog chapter, but after about ten chapters, that falls apart. Despite some strengths in progressing the story, in the last fifteen pages, suddenly the Boy can telepathically speak with the dogs. Huh? I know it's THE BOY WHO CAN SPEAK WITH DOGS, but the sudden shift in story focus does NOT work.

Of the books on the 2006-2007 Sunshine State book reading list, this one disappoints the most for me.

3 generous stars out of 5 from me.

The Boy Who Spoke Dog is a book about a boy who was on a ship that was headed to disaster in a storm. The boy, Jack, escaped on a lifeoat and came to an island where two packs of dogs lived. Feral ones, called fangos, which attacked sheep on raids and ate them, and sheep dogs, which protected the sheep, and if the fangos had to run off before they could eat the sheep that they had killed, the sheep dogs would eat them. The sheep were all the dogs' food supply, so they relied on each other despite being enemies. Jack first meets the fangos, where he escapes up a tree. Soon, he manages to escape, following a black and white border collie called Moxie by the rest of the sheep dogs. Moxie leads Jack to a broken-down hut surrounded by sheep and sheep dogs guarding them. Soon, a fango raid commences and Jack helps out. From then on, Jack tries hard to survive, eating some of the sheep that the fangos took down. Both sheep dogs, fangos, and now Jack live off the sheep. He got the meat by way of a knife. Sage, the oldest dog and the only one, besides Fango, the leader of the fangos, to remember humans, brings Jack to a sack filled with some items needed for Jack's survival. Eventually, Jack gets cornered by Fango and some others while trying to run for the shore, and Moxie saves him after Fango tries to stutter some words, but fails due to his corruption. Finally, the ship that Jack bailed out on comes back to forcefully pick him off the island. The arrival of the ship solved his problem of surviving, but he was reluctant to leave the dogs he somehow has suddenly formed a telepathic bond with. That is a plot point I didn't really understand. He communicates with Sage's spirit after he gets killed by fangos, then communicates with Moxie. I think you are supposed to believe the trauma or the extended living with the dogs caused it, but it is not fully explained. This is mainly why I rated it 4/5, instead of 5/5, since the author uses vivid language and creativity to express the story of the boy who learned to speak dog (somehow).

What makes us who we are? Are we simply our physical being, the sum of our actions, or who we wish to be? Elizabeth Evans takes these questions on while delivering an entertaining and suspenseful novel. The tragic consequences of people lying to others, God, and even themselves about who they are drive this story forward as protagonist Jersey must deal with her own identity issues: Is she still her mother's daughter and is her mother still the same person after their horrifying accident. Wanting the best for this amazing young girl as she struggles with the failings of the adults around her kept me intensely interested until the last sentence. This book is also a wonderful illustration of how religion and faith, when misunderstood and misused, can be a weapon of destruction.

One wonders about the accolade-strewn editorial reviews and the less-than-stellar reviews from the real readers. How original to delve deep into the psyche of the alchoholic Vietnam vet! ...and with a tendency to consistently digress from any noticeable plot with uninteresting, tangential forays. I believe that I have read more interesting phone books.

... a plot. This is one of the most appalling, atrocious books I've ever read. It is slow moving, the characters are terribly stereotypical, the setting isn't developed at all, and the utter, complete lack of plot makes me very happy that the pages of this book are recyclable. Another huge mistake was the addition of letters written by a certain character acting as complete chapters. These are the most sleep-inducing chapters of the entire book, as nobody is really interested in reading letters from an old woman to her dead lover. Put this book down before you have the chance to pick it up.

If you are looking for a quick read strictly for enjoyment, then this is not the book for you. However, if you want to really think and get involved in the minds of some very confused people suffering the consequences of inadvertent actions, or of victims of circumstance, then this will be an interesting experience for you.

Elizabeth Evans takes the reader into the heart of her confused, desperate characters. The novel challenges the reader to think about what it means to be human...what it means to be "good." And if that makes it seem like this is a heavy book, keep in mind that it is also a book full of suspense and humor. Calling the Coen brothers: this would make a great follow-up to Fargo! I loved this book!

This book is great for those kids that are creative and love to make things with their hands. The examples are good and instructions are very easy to follow. This opens up an entire world of abstract thinking when being creative.

Fantastic book. It was hard to tell what it was like when ordering so I took a bit of a punt. But it was all I wanted and more. Fun clay characters for kids to make with polymer clay, with step by step instructions and clear photos, showing you how to make each element and then put them together.

This book and one other were birthday gifts for my 15 year old grandson, so I e-mailed him to get HIS opinion.
He was very concise,"I'd say both rate around four stars out of five, or an 8 (scale of 1 - 10)"
I had seen some of Maureen Carlson's work so I figured the book would certainly be a good introduction to clay figures.

This was my first polymer clay book. I got it because my 8 year-old daughter had a play date with two other girls, and it was raining "cats-and-dogs". I found that, with my supervision, the girls were able to make figures that they were really proud of. No previous practice! But, Oh Oh(!), by the end of the play date the girls were watching mom make figures of her own, and shamelessly ignoring the little ones! That was over two years ago, and polymer clay has become one of my passions. This book is great for introducing the fun and versitility of polymer clay, and is great for kids with adult supervision!

My 8 y.o. daughter and I are on cat #3 in her planned family of 5. I agree with other opinions that there could be a little more details, but we're adaptable sort of folks, so we just ran with it and used our imaginations. Other figure books are too detailed in sculpting for kids so I think this is a great place for a kid to start especially as a project to share with a grownup.

The paperback is not just a paper version of the hardback, which Amazon makes it sound like it is, but a whole different, and much better, book. The hardback (edition 2) has poor black and white photos and treats many subjects in very cursory way. The paperback has wonderfully original art in color, and is very thorough on ways of marking and glazing. I was not careful and now have a crummy 2nd edition hardback which I don't know quite what to do with.
My 5 stars are for the paperback. I would only give 2 stars to the 2nd edition hardback.

For someone new to firing and glazes, this book is an excellent place to start. It explains things in simple terms, provides pictures and demystifies the process. While it doesn't provide an in-depth discussion of chemical changes and formulas or more than some basic recipes, it provided the basics I was looking for.

I'm still not sure we're going to invest in a ceramics kiln, but this was a very interesting book about the craft. Too much biography of famous contemporary ceramic artists (totally uninteresting - these are not names that mean anything to me, so, bleah), but otherwise interesting explanations of different types and techniques. A very worthwhile book - it will probably either galvanize you into investing in the kiln and materials, or turn you away from it, saving your money!

The images in this book are amazing! Every significant ceramic artists is represented. This is a must have for anyone who wants a complete guide to ceramic artists who use electric kilns. One of the best ceramic books available.

Contains a wealth of detailed info about electric kiln construction and usage, and about how to mix and use clays and glazes. The editor should have done a better job, because the wording is sometimes awkward and tedious, but it's still a good reference book containing very valuable information. Also has many excellent photos of finished work, as well as side essays about individual ceramists.

This book had some nice examples but the projects were so simple that I was turned off. What new directions? I know the author has some great stuff but this book wasn't at all representative. Let's get away from the simplistic in metal clay--there are plenty of beginner books out there.

Cece's done it again and better!

I love this book! I will recommend it to my own students. It is a beautiful book, lovely projects and great information. Both beginners and advanced Metal Clay artists will get a lot out of it.

While at first inviting, this is a book I chose to return. If you have worked in metal clay quite a bit, read related articles in publications, or attended workshops taught by leaders in this medium, you will have little use for this book. Some showcased images are refined and intriquing. And, a few images can be attributed to clay artists recognized in this field. Overall, however, I feel many examples and projects lack depth and do not reflect a level of quality and difficulty I would expect in a second book by someone now so well associated with this material. For metal enthusiasts just starting out, or with some experience, you may find it helpful; for me, the purchase was not warranted.

For a second book, I found this new one by Cece Wire to be a step above the last one. The basics are addressed well for anyone who is just starting with metal clay. I even found some tips and ideas that were new to me and I've been working with metal clay for 6 years! Chapter 3 is well done and is a good dictionary of working with metal clay. The step by step photos for gem and stone setting are excellent. A few things are added that might have been better left out because they are not addressed enough, i.e. Kum Boo and Enameling.But there are other books to go into more depth.

The photo gallery at the top of many of the pages is inspirational! This has always been a plus of Cece's two books, the glamor shots are great!

The selection of projects are different enough from what has been already published, that there is lots of new and exciting things to make. Most of them are appropriate for beginner and intermediate metal clay artists. The one major fault I have with this book is the same as the last one. While the projects are described step by step, there are not step by step photos. If you are a visual person like me, the explanation is good to read to fully understand the process, but until I SEE how it should look at each stage, I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly! My students agree. Maybe the publisher wanted to keep the number of color photos limited, but I'd rather see a smaller glamor shot and photos at crucial points in the instructions.

All in all, this is a good book to add to your library!

This is a very nice work. It includes most of the necessary information on materials and techniques, and offers some stunning illustrations of completed art by the author and guest artists. I was especially pleased with the variety of embellishment exhibited, particularly the inclusion of enamel, gemstones, and appliquéd patterns. Just the versatility of the medium is amazing. More than any of the metal clay authors, this lady inspires me to actually try it.

I don't often review books that I am selling, but I did want to mention that this has lots of wonderful full color photos as well as detailed instructions. As another reviewer commented, the quantities are inaccurate. I can't really respond to that concern, just that the book gives a dynamic presentation w/ hundreds of color photos.

fwiw,
happy crafting,
books-from-mk

This is not so much a how-to book as it is an idea book. The gallery is full of wonderful polymer clay creations, jewelry, sculpture, vessels, etc. Once you are familiar with the basic how-to of polymer clay, it's time to move up to this book to take your work to the next level. It's like visiting an art museum full of polymer clay things. You will be inspired by the different things you can do with polymer clay. Although you probably won't copy most of the projects in this book, you can borrow snippets of techniques to apply to your own creations. The gallery is filled with such variety of ways the clay is used, you will keep coming back to this book as your expertise increases with polymer clay.

I own about 10 polymer clay books, and this one is definitely my favorite. It is geared more toward the intermediate or advanced polymer clay artist, with few pages dedicated to beginner technique . Instead it features several really unique and beautiful projects, and the gallery pages are filled with amazing pieces that have given me a ton of inspiration. My only problem with the book is that the lessons are sometimes lacking clear diagrams or instructions and I ended up being a little confused at times. I did figure everything out in the end though, and ended up with great results. Overall, this is a great book to add to your collection.

Steven Ford is one of the best artists in polymer clay. This book was a disappointment. If it had only been a picture book of his work over 20 years it would have been a treasure. Not so.

We are making two of the projects and have had to return to the store twice for more clay. In the backgammon project, the quantities he specifies are completely wrong. You need to AT LEAST double the quantities. For example, he specifies to use 1.25 ounces of white clay and 3 ounces of black, blend them together, and roll them into a sheet that measures 5"x15" and is 6mm thick. By rolling it to 5mm thick, we got a sheet 4"x10" - and had to stop our project midway through until we could get back to the store.

Also in the backgammon project they call for 4 oz each of orange and purple clay. Then they direct you to make a ball exactly 1/8" (yes 3mm) in diameter of each color and "tint" two portions of translucent clay with it. There is not another word as to what to do with the remaining 4 oz of each color. (However it took us almost the entire four ounces of each color to tint the clay.) Then the directions state "Chop each tinted portion separately and mix them into the pale green clay by twisting androlling the colors together." After we blended the purple and orange into the base green, we realized he meant us to divide the green in half and mix purple/green and orange/green - though nowhere does it say to divide the base green in half. He also directs us to cut a cardboard base but fails to give the dimensions for the cardboard. I suppose we'll get a big sheet of cardboard, assemble the set, and then use an exacto knife to trim the cardboard to size.

The projects are beatiful - it's disappointing to be given very precise quantities and then have them be nowhere near what you need to finish the project. And to be given incomplete and poorly written directions.

So just go ahead and by three times whatever quantity is specified for your project and maybe you'll have some left over to return.

This book is an unfocused collection of reference manuals that seem to have been thrown together with very little forethought. It's poorly organized, the code examples aren't all that intructive, and there are plenty of errors throughout the book. It isn't very useful if you're learning Java, and it's a lousy reference if you already know it. I suggest skipping it.

I like this book because it brings together in one place a lot of information that is helpful in real-world development tasks. My complaint is that it seems carelessly edited, leaving you with a collection of chapters obviously written by different authors who didn't communicate much with each other in the formation of the book.

It's nice to be able to get the new Java 5 features under your belt in just a couple of hours of reading and playing around. In fact, the first chapter is excellent, code samples and all. The next chapter is nice for a quick review of methodologies, or if you are completely new to the frameworks that are often used in conjunction with Agile Programming in Java, such as JUnit and Hibernate and so on. Chapter 3 is a capable introduction to some of the more popular Design Patterns, but it is here that you first notice that the author ignores all the advice in Chapters 1 and 2 about how much easier your development will be if you use the new language features of Java 5 and the tools and methodologies of Agile development.

Things go downhill by Chapter 4, which covers Swing desktop GUI design and coding. The sample apps aren't all that well designed and don't don't demonstrate everything presented in Chapter 3 (such as the MVC application architecture) in a clear, convincing way. And it is here that you encounter the most shocking deficiencies of this book: sloppy, difficult-to-read sample code that compiles and runs--more or less--but which contains numerous lines (and even entire blocks) of extraneous code, poorly-chosen and sometimes even capitalized local and member variable names, and code stucture that defies best coding practices in many places. It is the type of code that you get when you hurry to meet a deadline for a prototype, and which you have not yet gotten around to going back and cleaning up.

Things pick back up a bit in subsequent chapters, with a nice intro to J2EE and J2EE-oriented API's, messaging, security, and a fine chapter on the much-neglected subject of application deployment.

Overall, I'm glad I bought this book. I've learned a lot from it, despite it's few annoyances. In fact, I made an exercise out of cleaning up the kludgy code samples in chapter 4. No, I'm not being sarcastic--I really did find it far more helpful and educational to patch that code up than to just read it through and then kid myself that I had internalized it. Who knows--maybe all sample code should be written with some defects.

Despite what some other reviewers said, I actually really enjoyed this book. It has allot of valuable material for folks making the jump from beginner topics to more advanced topics.

It seems that allot of folks expect the book to be all about JDK 5 when the title clearly says "PROFESSIONAL JAVA" (JDK 5 edition).

all I could say is that book is very poorly written , no connection between reader and writer, in may chapets ,they are just composed of a bunch of refference manuls that everyone can read for free from vendor , for example JAAS section is totaly useless ...
JDK 1.5 is covered very very poorly ...
it seems that book was written in a rush to get it out to market ..

Chpater 1: Key Java Language Features and Libraries - the only chapter that talks about JDK 5.

Waste of time to proceed further.

Clay has such an active imagination, and his use of language and imagery is truly masterful. There is no other in my opinion who can create metaphors as palpable and alive as this young gentleman. That being said, as much as I love to slowly drink from the elegant cup of this man's mind, the only way to get a true Clay Chapman experience is in person. Please, if you live in the Tri-State area, I urge you to attend one of his shows. You will never see anything like it again.

I feel without reservation the Clay McLeod Chapman is a talented, skillful, imaginative writer. This collection of short stories can make provacative reading in small portions to digest between readings.I have seen some of Chapman's PUMPKIN PIE SHOWS wherein he and other actors narrate his tales injecting some humor and all the required intonations of a drama.Remarkable watching which is mirrored in the Rest Area reading.This authors first novel I find to be a valid measure of his continuing progress as an author. Having just completed an Advance Reader's Copy of Miss Corpus I think Chapman's growth is quite apparent in this moving, macabre and painfully detailed story of death and dispair. Two totally different love stories that come
crashing together. I digress

What I like about this author's writing is its directness - right into other people's minds: the tough deaf kid on the bus; the hotdog thief; a mother whose son has been killed in war; a father looking for his lost child.

20 strange, enticing stories from the insides of other's lives in all their mournfulness, their rage & loneliness. Clay McLeod Chapman knows how to write from a children's point of view, especially about how incomprehensible parents can be.

If you like short stories - don't miss this collection!

A man waits endlessly for his daughter to return from the bathroom at a rest stop. He asks all passersby if they have seen her. You'll never guess where she is....

Two deaf teenagers find a way to "hear" one another on a bus full of other deaf children...

A search party tracks through the woods looking for a missing teenage girl. Will they find her?....

A family on a campout gets more than they bargain for when they meet up with a Bear Scout....

A mother searches for her son's body in a field of post-war corpses....

Mary Brown's fisherman husband was lost at sea....or was he?....

These are just a few examples of the twenty short stories included in Rest Area by Clay McLeod Chapman. This book has a unique aspect...each story is the monologue of only one person. The reader only gets an idea of what the responses of others involved (if there are any) may be through what the main character says.

Also, there isn't necessarily a plot present. They are more like the narration of moments in time. The tales range from compassionate to eerie, shocking and just plain odd. It's a collection straight from the author's imagination.

This book requires a lot of concentration in parts, or the reader won't "get it." At times it's like trying to sift through a Chinese riddle to find the words that will explain the meaning.

Imagine listening to someone talking on the telephone, only one side of the conversation is audible. Sometimes it's easy to understand what the point of the discussion is, and sometimes it's virtually impossible.

One thing can definitely be said....reading this book is an experience like no other.

A stunningly bad debut. These tales fall somewhere between short stories and rambling cracker monologues. Painfully obvious in their need to "SHOCK" and be "EDGY" they amount to little more than the work of a beat poet with tourettes. Self-consciously strange without being believable or even interesting I was left only with the conclusion: Hillbillies are impressively capable of buggery and squirrel hunting but the demands of character, setting and plot are way beyond this writer's gifts.

Perhaps this stuff passes for "daring" in the provinces but anyone who's taken Lit 101 will recognize this for what it is: hackwork.

The instructions were good and I found the advice great. I am just starting to apply my self to PMC. This book is just what I need.
Thanks

This art clay (trade name) book covers what everyone should know that is going to use the Art Clay brand metal clay. The first sections/chapters get the basic stuff down so one can move on to the fun parts making the projects. The pictures are of a good size with large numbers to correspond to the descriptive blurbs. They are of the close up type with little background of the work surface visible. (I do hate it when they show more work surface than the item they are making.) The material lists are well thought out in their content. The glossary and the gemstone characteristic chart is a nice touch. the chart really important in selecting stones to bake with the clay. I own it

Like Jackie's later book Metal Clay: The Complete Guide, she totally ignores the fact that there is more than one metal clay product on the market. Why? Because Jackie does not distribute Precious Metal Clay® (PMC) made by Japan's Mitsubishi Materials Corporation; she runs Art Clay® World, USA, Inc, distributing Art Clay®, a metal clay product made by Aida Chemical Industries, Ltd. At the very least, she might have discussed the pros and cons of the two companies' products. To ignore PMC® altogether seems too mercenary an approach to writing a project book. I said my peace when panning Jackie's book Metal Clay.

The projects shown are somewhat inspirational but the "faux raku" project stands out as just plain economically silly. For "faux raku," Art Clay® Silver paste is applied over terra cotta then, after firing, liver of sulfur is applied for a raku-like patina. It occurred to me that it would be a whole lot less expensive to actually make raku pottery than to make "faux raku" with jewelry-grade silver. Yes, you can do it with Art Clay® but why would you?

Great book. Easy to use. Great ideas for projects. Taught me things that I did not learn in a class I took

This book is a good starting point for those begining to work with metal clay.