Of Poisonous Fish and Polymer Clay

Warning: lots of pictures ahead.  For the summary, just look to the left! 

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Just before Christmas, I started playing with some white Sculpey I had leftover from a raised relief saxophone-playing jackalope I had made a little while back.  (What??  Yes, sax-playing jackalope - as a Christmas present for my sax-playing and figurine collecting Grandpa.)

I picked up more polymer clay at the store over break.  I stood in the aisle for a while hypnotized by all those colors.  But being the good budget-keeper that I try to be, and having taken enough art classes to know how to make more colors out of what I had, I went with red, yellow, blue and silver of one type, and sienna, silver, and translucent of another type.  I've been playing the last few days!

Task 1 was to figure out how to imitate scorpion fish fins (see post below for fishy picture).  Here's the final result, using the sienna alternating with mixed translucent and silvery clay.

And here is the final result with the prototypes.  I used the lower cost stuff to figure out how to make it work.  And I might end up using some of the prototypes in the necklace.  (This is for the February challenge - tropical holiday, remember?  Don't worry, there will be plenty of beadweaving as well!)

And then I just played with the clay to see how it worked and try out different stuff.  I like this blue set!  The largest is ~ 1 inch across.

These were the fin-making leftovers.  I like the stripedy one just beside my pinky.

These are red themed, I promise.  (Okay, so they're pink.  sigh...)

Just for fun!  I baked a little disk of reddish clay, then chopped it up and mixed it into the light blue clay for baking #2.

Purpley beads.  We'll have to find a use for those spirally beads.

And random leftovers.  The white spiral has some of the silver mixed in, so it actually shimmers a little in real life.  
...Now I'm inspired to go make more!  I know, these are pretty rough, and have fingerprints on them, but I'm having fun playing.  And besides, some of them need to be a little rough.  It's in their nature!