Clay is one of the most versatile, easy-to-work with, and fun materials around. Best of all, with the new oven-bake or air dry brands, you don't even need any special equipment to produce enormously charming crafts. These wildly creative techniques--dreamed up by two professionals who are madly in love with the craft--are incredibly clever and simple. If you can roll, pinch, press, cut, coil, and mold the clay, you've got the required basics. To do the rest, just let your imagination soar! Take a look at these bright, colorful pages filled with captivating jewelry, wonderful pottery, sweet buttons, and lattice baskets: it's an eye-opening, irresistible experience. Get started with choosing paint or glaze colors and selecting a type of clay. Then make flower-decorated pins, lacy tiles, glazed cross boxes decorated with floral designs, beads, and more. Bonus: a gallery fabulous projects done by the authors. Susan Alexander lives in Palmyra, WI, and Taffnie Bogart lives in Milwaukee, WI. 128 pages (all in color), 8 1/2 x 10. NEW IN PAPERBACK

With these playful, inspiring, and creative handmade crafts, claywork has never been so much fun! Get started with techniques, terms, tools, a glossary of colors, and a guide to different clays and their firing temperatures. Fashion a bouquet of flower-decorated pins, give cut tiles a "lace impression" design, make glazed boxes, and coil a pot adorned with pinched flowers. Bright color photos capture every stage of the process, and a gallery of imaginative possibilities inspires you.