Hi,
glad to hear that you like my pots Jim. You did confuse me a tad here though: why are you talking about a carving?
Hi Mortalis: thank you for the flowers but I am still far from a professional. May be it would be more obvious if you could see my pots in reality. Thank you for posting pics of your pots. Those pots are good you. If you want to get better there is just one thing: continue practising
I am not sure how you work with that polymer clay but I wonder whether you could get better results if you used normal clay.
I am not very gifted at those things found it very helpful to take lessons. There are loads of little tricks you can learn to get the results you want. I am not sure where the 8th layer is but in the UK you can get some very good books on pottery which I found helpful too....
Well, I should get going: I was planning to try a new bicycle out and cycle the 36km to visit my dad today.