Sue Heaser's Encyclopedia of Polymer Clay Techniques

Polymer clay is a mainstay for making miniatures. It is used for dolls, caricatures for model railroad engineers, and a number of faux materials for everything from scale jewellery, bones and swords, to miniature foods of all types. If you want a single reference that keeps track of all the techniques used with polymer clay, and want it to be clear enough for a beginner but act as a reference for an experienced user, Sue Heaser's Encyclopedia of Polymer Clay Techniques may become your well thumbed reference.

It neatly replaces a number of references in my library, and has lots of examples of scale miniatures (mostly 1:12) to make it really useful. I especially appreciate the way it shows how to do things by hand, as well as by machine or specialized tools. It also shows you some of the problems you may run into in your work and discusses current techniques and materials.