Its cold here so I broke into the plastic a bit last night and played with some stuff that I haven't used in a while. Actually I was on a mission to add to my tackle selections. Here are some 1.75" small fry baits I did up.
The colors except the blue are X2 or the original colors from CC. The blue is electric blue and I think it is from bears. The big departure is the hi lite. Or in this case a semi-hi lite. In each color shown I have used a Jacuard pigment called PearlEx. Its a pearl but in smaller amounts it acts as a hyper hi lite. This stuff changes the way color behaves very fast and is tricky to use but the end result can be eye-popping. The blue baits have "true blue" pearlex added. Both the brown and green-backed baits began as baby-bass green with a very small amount of "spring green" pearlex but after shooting the green I added antique copper to the green plastic for the brown bait. If you look at the tail of the brown baits you can see the green show thru. I added just a wee bit of "violet-brass", an almost holographic color that switches from a shiny brass color to a violet color, to the smoke center color but unfortunately it isn't strong enough to show in the picture. If I put the layout in sun bright enough to get the violet-brass to show the other colors are radical. At any rate, that smoke in the hand is one nifty color to split the backs and the bellies.
If you snoop around a little bit all sorts of materials can be found to expand the world of plastic coloring. If lead is your playground, this pearl powder will slip right into your powder paint and makes some really interesting colors. There again it will depend on how much you add, but you can achieve finishes that are a wonderful pearl color to those that simply have a unique inner shine to them.
