I am relatively new to the cake central forum, but would appreciate any suggestions that anyone would care to share with me.....I see some of the cakes here and am in awe....I love the ones with the clay characters....can anyone suggest a good teach-yourself book that I could purchase that would help me learn this technique? I live in a small rural area and classes are just not available to help with this, so I am gonna have to teach myself, but in looking at the store, there are so many books available........any suggestions would be appreciated..thanks for your help!

You can go to Hobby Lobby or Micheals and get the polymar clay instruction books for figures. They work well with fondant and gumpaste. Also, if you google instructions for figures you'll come up with all sorts of sites that sell dvds and books.

I very much recommend going to Youtube and looking up aine2. She has great instructional videos posted (thanks, Lorraine!) and if you want more, you can buy instructional videos from her website.

Maisie Parrish has published some excellent books on making figures. Maybe try your local library, they might be able to get them for you.
And as PP said, Aine2 on Youtube
HTH

thanks for all your suggestions....I will check all these out. Can't wait to get started practicing!!