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The Art of Resin Clay: Techniques and Projects for Creating Jewelry and Decorative Objects by Sherri Haab, Rachel Haab, and Michelle Haab covers a really unusual type of jewelry making and crafting, resin clay. They cover air dry as well as two part resin clays and include techniques for working with this medium as well as 20 projects. The book is published by Potter Craft, which is a division of Random House and sells for $21.99 in the US and $24.99 in Canada.

The Materials and Techniques Section

The first chapter is called "Resin Essentials" and covers the types of resin clay used. There are two types basically, air dry and two part epoxy, and then these are broken down into seven specific types and brands. Tools and supplies are also included. For anyone who has worked with other clays such as metal clay or polymer clay, most of these will be familiar to you such as a rubber tipped clay shaper, wax paper, olive oil, teflon sheets, and various tools used to texture the clay.

Working with clay is discussed next, and this covers some safety considerations such as wearing gloves when working the clay with your hands. The difference between working with air dry and two part epoxy resin are explained, and you get into the other techniques like coloring resin, using armatures, and carving into the resin.

With all of this section, you get a lot of full color step out photographs and detailed explanation, so the information is more than plentiful for anyone totally new to resin clay.

However, the introduction does suggest to always work with small amounts and small projects when first learning how to work with this material.

Jewelry and Decorative Projects

The project chapters are divided into Imitative Techniques; Creative Bezels; Mixing Resin Clay with Other Mediums; and Molding and Sculpting Techniques. Compared to a number of craft books, twenty projects may not sound like a lot, but many of these projects are really starting points and have tons of variation opportunities. For example in the "Imitative Techniques" chapter, one project is a Raku Beads Bracelet. While the project demonstrates how to make one particular type of Raku bead bracelet, you could follow these same steps and change it up by using different pigment powder colors, forming different sized or shaped beads, and/or stamping different designs into the clay.

So really while these are stand alone projects, they are infused a lot of with techniques that you can alter very easily or mix with other techniques from other projects in the book. One item to note, these projects do take a chunk of time, which is not a surprising element of resin; however, those who want immediate gratification should be aware that none of these are going to be super quick projects.

Final Thoughts About the Book

Like many of Sherry Haab's previous books (some of which I list below), this book is impressive. While there are a few decorative type objects in the book, such as mini-resin food items and a kaleidoscope, this book is really for jewelry makers and is packed full of inspiration and practical "how to" information. For anyone who has worked with clay before, probably the learning curve will be shorter than someone who never has worked with clay. Forming, rolling, and shaping clay can be trickier than it looks some times, so I would expect anyone new to working with clay should be prepared to spend time getting the basics down before he or she is able to produce the beautiful jewelry that is in the book.

Sherri Haab Jewelry Inspirations: Techniques and Designs from the Artist's Studio

The Art of Resin Jewelry

Beaded Macrame Jewelry: Stylish Designs, Exciting New Materials

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