Polymer Clay Butterflies - Painted!

Its been a while since my last blog (a few hours :-p) so here is the continuation of the last one which featured my first ever polymer clay butterfly prototype. I made several more, all these were made without the use of a pasta machine and some were even created on the C-train in NYC, drawing unwanted attention from fellow mass transit takers, anyway just imagine the detail and beauty when I start making them using the pasta machine in various colored clays!
So anyway below are some pictures of my itty bitty cuties.
I baked them in the same batch with two couples which were butterfly people and MUCH thicker than the butterflies so they were over baked but did not burn. Polymer clay extrudes oil when burned so I'm glad they were just overdone a little.

Scroll down to read and see the process, click pics to make em big!

I began with the baked butterfly which had its wing veins/lines etched in before being baked as I knew I was going to stain them.


I "stained" the wings with black paint and used a paper towel to blot off the excess leaving the recesses darker than the upper parts of the wing which are to be colored.


Like so:


Next I applied color, I wanted red, green, yellow or orange, and multi



Here is a pic to show scale, as you can see, they are TINY


My next step after the paint dried was to make the butterflies iridescent or shiny so I used paint with soluble metals to do so... in the picture below the top two butterflies have the paint applied while the bottom three do not, applying the paint not only makes them shine but makes the paint more vivid, to further keep it vivid I may apply polymer clay glaze or sealant to the finished pieces.



And there you have it, finished product are just very beautiful little gems of polymer clay, the photographs do not even fully capture how they reflect any available light, they are like little precious stones or beautiful tropical fish. Stay tuned for my next endeavor of making a pair of larger wings for a butterfly person to wear, it should be fun!