Salaric

I make fimo vases by covering glasses in the stuff! I always check new types of glass by giving them a dummy run in the oven with no fimo, just in case they crack.

For valentine’s day I made this heart vase:

I started off by mixing up blue and pink fimo; I do this by rolling each colour into a sausage. I then put them next to each other and roll them into one sausage – now half blue and half pink in cross section. I then folded the sausage in half, rolling it in my hands so it smooths into a nice sausage. I repeated this two times to get the desired interlacing of blue and pink fimo.

I then cut slices from the sausage – I try to go for 1-2mm, but it doesn’t need to be that accurate if you do not want a regular pattern. I then place all the ‘discs’ of fimo next to each other in a very distorted square; then I use my fingertips to squidge the discs together. A hi-ball glass then serves as a rolling pin and I made sure I rolled in different directions to try to get the pressure even across the glass. Otherwise you end up with a wedge of fimo – thick at one end and thin at the other.

I also picked the sheet of fimo up and turned it over regularly, otherwise it sticks to the surface it is being rolled on. I sometimes have to use a modelling tool to help me lift up these sheets. A thin, flatish blade is best. I use the rule of thumb that if the sheet starts to distort when lifted, then rolling it any thinner will make it too thin and useless.

I then selected one of my heart cookie cutters (metal), and I chose the wider of the two for purely stylistic reasons – ie I was going to use a tumbler glass which is short and wide, so I thought the shorter wider heart would look better! The heart is approximately 8cm wide.

I cut a heart out of the blue and pink fimo sheet and then gently laid it on a glass. Making sure I was happy with the position I gently pressed it onto the glass – checking that as few as possible air bubbles remained between heart and the glass (you can see this by looking on the inside of the glass) by gently pressing it on. Be careful not to press too hard or you will distort the heart’s shape!

I then baked the glass – 130 degrees C for 30 mins (1/2 hr).

I then got some grey granite mix fimo with glittery flecks in it; I squidged it about first to make it soft enough to handle. I did the same with same yellow/gold glittery fimo. I then rolled them into sausages and cut discs off them. So I now had grey stone fimo discs and yellow fimo discs.

I pressed the grey granite discs in around the heart to give it a nice border and I then decided that it would be better to have a mix of the yellow and granite. So I scrunched all the yellow up again to make a sausage, which I mixed with a grey granite sausage. I only folded it about four times to get the effect I wanted. I cut it into discs and then put it on the vase around the pre-existing grey layer, blending it into the fimo already on the glass.

I then thought that two verticial strips either side of the heart would be nice, so I mixed up some sausages of metallic gold fimo and dark blue, folded them together and cut it up into the little discs. Making sure I had the glass so that the strips would be the exact opposite of each other on the glass, and be nicely positioned either side of the glass, I laid the discs on the glass and pushed them down so they stayed on.

It was only once I had done this and looked at the effect I decided that it looked completely wrong. I took my penknife and cut down the side where the blue and gold pattern had fused with the grey granite and yellow. I then scraped all the unwanted fimo off and later made beads and things with it.

For the remainder of the vase I used alternate layers of grey granite and the yellow granite mix. I continued the strips underneath the base of the glass and also made sure there was an overlap of fimo along the rim of the glass.

Once the vase was completely covered, I signed the bottom by slashing marks into it lightly so that they didn’t go all the way through. Then using a long, flexible angled plastic blade from my sculpture tools, I removed the excess fimo from the inside of the vase by running it along the rim.

Then just to smooth the fingerprints out, I rolled the hi-ball glass around the outside to smooth it. I then put it on a baking tray and baked it in the oven for 30 minutes at 130 degrees C.