I woke up today with a need for crackled marbles. No project in mind, just "I need me some crackled marbles, I doodly do." I'm learning to roll with these things when they hit, so I set about crackin' some glass, baby!
But here I sit with two broken marbles (also pretty, but not my goal) and roughly 90-plus still uncrackled marbles. Two methods I've tried didn't work very well--boiling, then ice water; baking, then ice water. Each method broke 1 marble. That's it. Dammit. Now I'm going to try what I observed at The Glass Works here in town. I'm baking the marbles for a really long time at 350(no, there's no way in my oven they'd get hot enough to melt), and then will put them in a closed metal container and wait for them to cool on their own. That oughta do it.
If it doesn't, then I'll think of something else. Fricaseed marbles, anyone?
ETA: I've got a few gorgeous crackly marbles, yays! I hope most of them pop and crack as they cool. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them, besides looking at them. 'Cause they's prettyful.
Try frying them in a cast iron skillet. See:
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Here's a How to:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7533239_fry-marbles.html
Thanks, Heidi, good info! I have to admit, I was afraid of frying the things. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that they'd explode! But they didn't, the marbles are stunningly beautiful. WOOT!
ReplyDeleteIf you decide to try the iron skillet idea, I'd like to be there. I don't have a good reason to have any more cracked marbles than I already do. ;-)
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