Grotto rocks done - on to the mermaid

Things have been fairly quiet in the evenings lately, so I've been able to finish all the rocks in the mermaids grotto. Most are similar to the ones already done, bouche threads, silk gimp, French knots and purl purl variations. The one new rock is the front rock on the right side made up of lots of loops. The loops are small bits of silk wrapped purl - the silk wrapped wire that is then coiled. Tricia suggested it in class, and since I am in love with the purl, I just had to do it. I put one layer of felt under the loops just to bring it a bit forward, and it also helped because it gave something for the wire to hook into to keep the loops in place.

Here is a close up so you can see the loops of purl.
I still need to finish the bits of coral in satin stitch in the background, but in the meantime, I'm working on the mermaid. I have been questioning the body of the tail that I did in detached buttonhole lace using GST. As I did it, I didn't make the stitches very close or dense thinking it looked more like scales. But as I looked at it further, I realized that part of the reason it looked okay was because it was on the blue plastic that was the base for the needlelace pad. So, today I decided to remove the piece and see if I needed to do it again.

Here it is placed over the wool padding, and I really don't like it with the white background.
But then I remembered Tricia mentioning in class that she wished she had used the flat gold thread that she put in the end of the tail into the whole tail, so I found some gold ribbon that I could cut to put behind the buttonhole lace, and now I am happy with the look. Now it looks more like gold and green scales. I was also worried that the piece was too small, but it turns out the size is fine. So on to the tail fins!