Best 'How To' Books For Polymer Clay?

[FranOnTheEdge]

Hi,
What in your opinion is the best "How To" book for users of Polymer Clay?
I know there are quite a lot of tuts on YouTube, but that makes it hard to search for what you want.

So I wondered about a book. (two librarians for parents so I love books anyway)

I'm interested in SteamPunk and Textures and I think it's called 'Filigree'? it's fine delicate work made up of rolled snakes of clay, circles, patterns... things like that.

Any recommendations?

[Cara Jane]

Hi Fran

For inspiration I love Donna Kato's books. If you like textures her Creative Surface Effects' book would be an interesting read. Haven't seen much Filigree in books but there are lots of free tutorials out there for it. I prefer a book too, and a written tutorial over a video - I find the pace in videos either too slow or too fast

Cara

[FranOnTheEdge]

Hi Fran

For inspiration I love Donna Kato's books. If you like textures her Creative Surface Effects' book would be an interesting read. Haven't seen much Filigree in books but there are lots of free tutorials out there for it. I prefer a book too, and a written tutorial over a video - I find the pace in videos either too slow or too fast

Cara

I didn't used to like videos, but I think that the quality of teaching on Video Tuts has improved over the last few years, the pace is slower, and people (good tutors anyway) stop and show you what they mean - either by pointing to what they are talking about or by ensuring that the camera is in focus and can see things clearly even if that means slowly rotating the item in question.
In my opinion (and this is JUST my opinion) a bad tutor waffles about irrelevant stuff too much, has the camera focused on them AND on the worktable instead of much closer showing just the hands and the work.

I've no objection to seeing a full view of the person doing the tut, but after that you REALLY, REALLY need to be able to see what's happening IN DETAIL, and at a decently high resolution too. YouTube has recently allowed 720 and 1080 res and currently I've even seen higher res than that. The old 480 or even worse 240 is terrible, just terrible!

Although I have seen a few decently focused videos even at low resolutions, these are people who took the time to understand how to focus their camera before beginning to film. Something that really everyone should be able to do.

So that now I find I prefer a video tutorial (one that's done well) since then you can see properly what's being done, rather than having to guess from a few still images, some things being much easier to show than to explain.

I've heard of Dona Kato, isn't she the inventor of Kato Clay?

I've heard good things about the transparent clays in Kato clay and in Cernit's transparent clays.

When I've used up all my Premo, I think I might move to one of those better clays - as I HATE that beastly half moon plaqing that you almost always get with Premo's trans clay.

If the local library had any Dona Kato books I'd like to see what she's like as a writer/tutor. But some books are just a means to showcase a person's work... pretty frustrating for me when I'm trying to find out things.

On the pace of videos, I think that super speed videos of people's work is just showing off and of limited value to anyone else. Makes me want to throw things. Usually at the person in the video, Lol!