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Try MF baby bass for the green and Spikeits root beer for the brown. For a more fleshy brown color use Spikeits Carolina pumpkin, use a lot of it cause it is week.

A great old school color. If I'm not mistaken, I used light green pumpkin and light root beer. Both LC colors. Hope this helps at least a bit.

Like Sonny said, Createx makes a "transparent base". It is actually a pigment free paint, so it is 100% compatible. It appears milky white in the bottle but dries crystal clear. This can be added to opaque (or any other Createx paint) to make it more transparent. It does not thin the paint, so viscosity is not affected. Use a reducer with the mixture for the right consistency. It is cheap and has many other uses. I also use it over foiled baits or epoxy to make a nice base for paint to stick to.

There is a razor saw / miter box combination specially made for Balsa and basswood. It is fast and clean, and I like working from a square cut.

I have some cedar to carve for some toothy critters, but have yet to try it. I have a basswood tree in my front yard and it puts out about 10 new shoots out of the base every year. This gives me plenty of knot free wood to carve. I love it!. it is so much more consistent than balsa, a bit denser, a bit tougher, and it sands great. But Raven is right about cedar. It is so much more durable.

W lure has a similar blank available in smaller quantities (WM600). I am not crazy about the insert style lure blanks. But they do swim well.

Any paint with a pearl, metallic or color-shift pigment has a greater chance of clogging. I reduce mine quite a bit an spray it at low pressure. You really don't need a lot of it to make a big difference - at least the way I use it. The size of the powder pigment may not be fine enough in that brand. I have had no problems with the folkart. Pearls tend to clump sooner than other paints (like transparent, opaque, detail). Don't thin your paints in advance then store them - esp pearls. They do weird thing in the bottle. One thing you may try is a little retarder mixed in with the paint.