Work in progress...

Today I have some images for you of one of my shop items in progress. Here's the finished item, a recycled lightbulb snowglobe:
First I prep the lightbulbs. I have no images of that yet, but it involves carefully smashing the glass and taking the bits of glass, frosting, and wires out of the bulb, then washing and drying it.

Then I sculpt the inside items out of polymer clay. You can see my clay bits in this fancy storage container. (I wrap them in PressNSeal and store them in a Ziplock bag).

Here you can see two prepped lightbulbs in the upper right corner, a large dowel I use as a rolling pin, and a set of exacto knives that come in real handy for this kind of work.



This snowglobe has a set of four, slightly marbled red and white hearts inside. I make the individual hearts and then "glue" them together with liquid Sculpey before baking them in the oven to cure them. I bake them on a plate (it's oven-safe). You can see the 5 hearts (one didn't make the cut) and another tiny sculpture (tiny lambs for another snowglobe) in this picture beside the bottle of liquid Sculpey.

In this next picture you can see the lambs in progress (that snowglobe met with an unfortunate accident and will be remade for the lambs and ready to post in a week or so).

Here's my work table with a number of other tools I use for this project. There are some kitchen skewers, a tube of glitter, and some little rubber bumpers I use as feet. The skewers are great for applying glue and pushing objects around the inside of the bulb. You can also see the tube of silicone sealant. Glue doesn't work very well underwater, so the sealant holds the sculpture in place and then seals the cork into the top.

At this point in the project I tried cramming the hearts into the lightbulb only to discover that they don't fit. The bottom heart was removed (saved for another project) and the remaining hearts placed into the lightbulb.

The pliers stay in the lightbulb for 3 days while the sealant cures. It takes another 3 days to cure the sealant on the cork stopper.


At the end of all that the bulb is filled with water, glitter, and the stopper is sealed into place. Tada! Check out the listing HERE.