polymer inlay experiments

well, now. this seems to be working out pretty nicely!

i started by rolling out the black polymer clay on the #1 setting on the pasta machine, to make a bunch of blanks. that i did a variety of things with the blanks...some i baked without doing anything to them, and some i played around with a bit before i baked them.
for the dotty one on the right i used 2 different sized ball burnishers (tiny) to indent in the soft clay before i baked it. the one on the left was carved with a dockyard tool after the polymer was baked.
then i went ahead and squashed and smeared in different colors and baked after the addition on each new color.

you can see here that this is what i decided to do in that hanging-around ring. when i sand it down i'll decide if i want to keep it or not. the frontmost one made me think about the possibilities of creating little illustrations...that one in particular makes me think of a little stylized garden.
this is what they look like in the middle of the wet sanding...


this is really fun and not expensive and i've been trying to figure out ways to incorporate polymer with the metalclay for months....