My skull ate my heart

Welcome back to another episode of "I can't believe your really reading this you silly silly person."

So here we have another of my weeks class works. "My heart jumped over the moon". Except in my case (as is usually the case) a skull walked by, saw my project, then looked at me and said "Are you really doing a cutsy bootsy little widdew heart on a pretty little leaf background?" At which my manliness (now truly offended) responded "Um....I guess not?" So I thought, OK, how can I make this assignment me. I mean the whole idea here is not just to duplicate, but to see how my old skills could merge with the new techniques. Enter Mr. Skull and Mr. Tombstone. That's a little more my style. Nothing against hearts. I love mine. It keeps me alive and all. This is good. Everything was plunking along fine. I played with the syringe to make the skull face and hand bones. (yeah thats a hand holding the skull. IT IS! STOP MAKING FUN OF ME!) So yeah, things going fine until... So Louise said to me that metal clay is the most fragile when it's dry but not fired. I found this out by man handling the skull and bone. I did this by holding it from the ends of the bone with my thumb and index finger....and braking one end off. Louise also told me that everything is fixable at this point. WOOT! Slip is your friend. Now after it was fired we were supposed to NOT burnish it and color it with Prisma color pencils instead. I did that.....and hated it. Pastel colors just aren't me. I just didn't think pastel had the feel I was going for... it was more like something a Goth new borne baby would wear. That and I had problems controlling the color blending. So honestly I think even the baby would have spit up on it. Back to the drawing board I went.
I figure doing a liver of sulfur patina will get me the look I am going for. Now I just have to figure out the whole resist thing. I want the moon and grass to be a rainbow patina and the tombstone and bones to be black. Time for some fun.

[Edit] So...after making this post I realized that I HAD liver of sulfur. Duah. So why was I typing about what I might do and not just just getting off my bum and going to do it?! So THERE! There it is. The way I like it. I think I'll drill a hole someplace on the thing and link the skull to the main pendant with chain. MANLY chain. BIG BURLY MANLY....um... heh, sorry...

[2nd Edit] I just found out that you MUST use actual acetone or good old fashioned turpentine to blend the colored pencil. None of this "earth and body friendly" garbage. Get toxic or go home. Heh.