Octopus with Ocean Reef Bowl

Hello and welcome to my blog. This is my first post about working with Polymer Clay. I plan to add more adventures as I explore the possibilities of this wonderful medium. 

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The glass bowl I used for this project was purchased from the Dollar Tree, they have many different sizes, this is the smallest. 

 The reef in the bowl was constructed first, when it was finished I took a picture and sketched on the octopus to see how it would look. I am surprised how close the finished piece is to my plan, that certainly doesn't happen very often. 

While searching the internet, I found several graphics that helped me understand octopus anatomy,

After conditioning the clay, I made the pieces pictured below. 

Next, I arranged the legs, added a small circle of clay between them, then positioned the head near the center of clay. Then I cut a circle out of a sheet of clay made on the medium setting of my pasta machine. Made a hole in the center of the circle and laid it over the top of legs.  The legs were then blended into the “skirt”.  After making the eyes and the funnel on the side of the head, the skin texture was added with the smallest ball tool. 

The color was added with soft pastels, ... they were scraped to get a fine powder to brush onto the skin. 

You can see the dark brown and gray pastels in this picture, but I also added some deep red and black to the skin and some deep yellow around the eyes. 

When the octopus was completed, I placed it on the rim of the bowl and arrange the legs. My octopus has one leg hanging in the bowl because he is going after the starfish. "smile"  I gave the piece extra strength while baking by slipping a chop stick across the rim and under the octopus to keep him from sliding into the bowl.

Speaking of the bowl, all the coral pieces were made with polymer clay. I glued a large stone into the bottom so I didn't need to use as much clay. The area around the stone was filled in with Premo Accent Granite. The green seaweed was baked first in polyester batting to hold it's shape, it was the only thing I had to pre-bake.

I have been sculpting octopuses lately, guess you could say I am obsessed. :)  The silver one was created over a glass paperweight. The gold octopus sits on a shell shaped dish.  It peaks my creativity when I find something new to "decorate" with clay, so I check out the thrift stores and dollar stores often. I also found a lovely bottle at AC Moore, so you never know when you will see something that "needs" some help. ^^

  

Hope you enjoyed my blog, ... in the future, I will try to take more pictures as I work. My hope is that you will be inspired to try working with PC as well, the possibilities are endless for making wonderful things.