From balloon-request@cvs.rochester.edu Tue Apr 16 16:25:35 1996 id AA03134; Tue, 16 Apr 96 16:19:37 EDT From: "Perry, Troy" To: "'Balloon Sculpting Mailing List'" Subject: my review: Great Balloons by Jean Merlin Date: Tue, 16 Apr 96 13:17:00 PDT Message-Id: <3173F2D5@p00.msx1.uswnvg.com> Encoding: 37 TEXT > There is a book I have been thinking about purchasing and would like to > know if anyone out there has it and think it is worth my while, is it a > good book? The book.... Great Balloons- Jean Merlin My Opinion: I recently purchased this book and I found several useful things in it. At first, I was disappointed that many of the sculptures were _very_ simple or were just variations on a theme (i.e, same basic sculpture passed off as three different birds with only minor variations). However, I found many really useful things in the second half of the book. There are several "shape-shifting" sculptures that really sparked my imagination (dog to giraffe, swan with egg to baby swan, basset and daschund to stag). I wish there were more in the book. The idea is simple, but I hadn't thought of it on my own. This concept was worth at least half the price of the book, if not more. Also, since I haven't been doing this for hire for very long, I found the Bits of Business in the back very helpful. Especially, the suggestions for different themes. Some of Mr. Merlin's ideas I just don't agree with. Particularly, he suggests stocking two years worth of balloons. I can get balloons so easily that I would prefer to buy mine a bit more frequently and have fresher (more fresh?) stock. Also, there were a couple of places in the book where reference was made to another section of the book which I never could find. Almost like some section was missing. Hmmm... Overall, I think that just the fact he has a stage show doing balloons is pretty impressive and gives him quite a bit of credibility...at least with me. I'll listen to anyone with that kind of experience. And I'd recommend the book to anyone who hasn't been twisting for years and years. Troy