beadyeyedbrat My Journey Through Polymer Clay 5

 
Paths  Ornament Burnt Beads
'Speriment 3rd attempt 07-16-01
Take a pretty cane. Slice up poor pretty cane. Make ropes and twist them. Lay them on the ball willy-nilly. Let them meander. 
Brush with a couple of coats of Future and imbed beads and sparklies while still gummy enough to mess up your fingers. Peel dried Future off fingers. Bake and let cool.
Break the sucker!
Actually, tap it carefully until you hear the glass break. Tap harder.  Stab finger with needle tool and suck off blood.
Grab pliers, put ornament in paper lunch-type bag, close eyes tightly and squeeze until you hear a crunch. Open eyes and see spider web cracks throughout most of the ball. Reclose bag and hit a corner of a hard surface with it just until you hear the tinkle of glass dropping into the bottom of the bag. 
Start pulling out pieces of glass with pliers (needle tool, tweezers, much cursing) taking care not to cut or totally tweak out of shape. (note clay snakes in trash with pieces of glass still attached) Remove glass piece by piece, watching the inside to be sure there are no hangers-on. This is more difficult than it sounds cuz the inside of the clay is glass-smooth and shiny from baking on the glass ball.

Glass all gone!

Do NOT get the bright idea of putting more Future on and re-baking. (note strange mass of clay spaghetti in trash)

Few more coats of Future applied. Okay, so I put 5 more on. I want #3 to survive.
 

Now how to hang this thing? Any ideas? Further baking is OUT.
Kim,  Maybe next time...take that wire that goes through the cap...place it on one of your squiggles..cover all but the loop part with another squiggle...bake. 
OR....use strand of fish line in place of the wire with a toothpick between the thread and the clay to prevent the loop getting baked to the clay...OR use colorful telephone wire instead of the wire from the original bulb??? 

Cella in SDak
aka helpful elf #2
I'm posting these because something interesting happened. I was doing a demo at the fair using beads and cane slices. The kids picked a bead and added the slices. We cured them and the kids got to take them home. After they cooled, of course.
Here are three beads, baked at the same time, and only the brown bead base burned. None of the cane slices or the other bead bases did.
The bases were made of scrap clay, FIMO and Premo mixed together and probably some translucent in with, all well conditioned and mixed. The bead was a medium tan (supposedly skin) color. Not only did it burn, it burned enevenly. Maybe you can see the small spot in the closeup where some of the original color domes through. Very weird.

Burnt bead close up.

See the spot to the middle left? Above
the green flower? And how uneven it is
Some of the cane slices were of mixed Fimo and Premo,  so I'm mystified.
The translucent, maybe? Maybe it isn't burnt, but the trans darkened?
Anyone with any other ideas?

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