Along the line of the post last week I collected the beginner tips and basics from a few other bloggers:

• Tanja covers a few of her basics – brand preferences. She tells beginners the same thing I do: try whatever you can.
• Katie has scads of good stuff on her site but a post devoted to baking and breaking – two things that plague some newbies. To the crack list, I have to add: If you are covering items that flex in heat (like not dried out woods or papier mache) make sure the clay is thicker. Thin layers will crack. This frustrated me a lot at the start. Even now, when I do very large glass pieces, the tiny amount the class moves in the oven will crack the tissue thin clay veneers I put on it. My solution is to use thicker clay there or float it on liquid clay but there were many bad words spoken first.
• And a tutorial with diagrams about how to make Skinner blend plugs or blocks, useful for pretty much all clay things.

The picture is of someone’s clay tools / set up for a project. Right now, my studio table has sheets and sheets of lily beads and pillow beads in progress. There are a couple of shaping tools for the lilies and a tiny little clay wand (mini roller) for smoothing the pillow beads. What kind of clay tools do you consider necessary? Did you customize any of them or find unique uses for regular household doodads?