Baubles

Look what I found while I was looking for something completely else, which of course still remains undetected. Since I had to move I'm always looking for things but seldom find them. I know exactly where I stored everything in the old flat but a lot of stuff seems to have disappeared along with it, although I know it must be somewhere.

These are unfinished machine-made Christmas tree ornaments. They are almost 20 years old. Back then we had a school trip to the glass works of Lauscha in Thuringia which has a 400 year old tradition of glassmaking. When we visited the factories we were allowed to take those with us. The upper one is an unfinished Christmas tree ball. It's already silvered and usually it would have been decorated with a handpainted design in one of the next steps. It has especially thick walls, thicker than the glass of light bulbs. It's much thicker than the thin-walled and fragile baubles traditionally used here for Christmas decoration. These bolder ones were made to be exported to the USA. (Aren't Americans able to handle fragile things?) The lower one should have become a walnut ornament. It shows quite well the process of forming the piece with a mould.
Outside of the factory building I saw the most amazing pile of scrap and rubble imaginable. A huge and beautiful glassy pile of broken Christmas baubles sparkling and glittering in the hot summer sun in all the colours of the rainbow. What a sight! It looked so unreal, truly magical.

Winter Night

One month ago I made this bowl. Now I finally baked it together with some other items I completed meanwhile. It's the most sparkly thing I ever made because I used glitter colours. I can't decide if it is tacky or gorgeous. It looks so much like a twinkling frosty winter night to me, although the white parts looked brighter before curing. Fimo glitter white seems to contain a big part of translucent clay. I spent 2 1/2 hours alone just placing the slices on the bowl's surface because the design evolved while I did it. I am slow, but I get completely absorbed in it when I do things like that.