The Butterfly Project

My mom absolutely adores butterflies; so I designed a butterfly pendant for her this Christmas. It proved to be my biggest clay challenge yet! The orginal shape and size turned out great; but the shape of the butterfly distorted as I reduced the cane. The translucent clay wasn't as soft as the other Premo clay colors. This difference in consistencies caused the butterfly to bulge at the ends of the cane - weird and frustrating! I tried everthing - resting the cane, an overnight cool in the refrigerator, even adding more translucent clay to the ends...but to no avail. The end result is a a lot of Monarch scraps which I've saving for beads.

Here's the pattern, my gradient tubes, and lower part of the wings...

I think I sat in this position for at least 4 hours.... ...and wa lah - a Monarch Butterfly appears. Then, the project gets a little crazy as I add the translucent clay and attempt to reduce the cane.