Thursday 11 February 2010

Fimo Fire.

Evening entertainment is pretty limited in Nantes. There are the bars, of course, but neither my liver or my wallet benefit from going to bars night after night. So, myself and another assistant, Caitlin, came up with the thrilling idea of making buttons and other assorted objects from Fimo.



Fimo, for those who don't know, is a clay-like plastic-polymer, which comes in a variety of colours. We bought red, purple, glittery-blue and granite, and then started to make various things with the Fimo. I made a beer can, a guitar, an elephant, and and an assortment of buttons. Caitlin made a mermaid, rabbit, more buttons, a butterfly and a ladybird.


Here's the elephant, unicorn, hearts, buttons, mermaid, musical note and starfish, in happier times.


I was particularly happy with my replica of a beer can.

It said on the packet that we needed to bake them in the oven for 30 minutes in order for them to harden. So, sitting them on a baking tray, we slid them into Caitlin's mini-oven, turned it on, and went to sit at the kitchen table.


Caitlin puts the Fimo in the oven, mere minutes from disaster...

Barely five minutes later, I suddenly smelled smoke. Thinking they were just a little bit over-cooked, I went over to the oven to take them out. Upon opening the oven, flames leapt out and started to lick at the cupboard door, quickly filling the entire apartment with thick black smoke. We looked for a fire extinguisher, but, being France, there wasn't one. We unplugged the oven from the socket, and closed the door, hoping to starve it of oxygen and put it out. However, there was still plenty of air getting in through the vents at the side, keeping the fire steadily raging inside the oven, puffing out gallons of smoke.

By this point, Caitlin and I were hanging out of the window, trying not to breathe in the dense smoke, and gasping for air. The fire was showing no sign of getting smaller, so in one last effort before escaping, I mustered as much breath as I could, opened the oven, and blew. This actually put out the fire, while simultaneously blowing a thick cloud of sooty smoke right into my face.


The smoke slowly starting to disperse.

With the fire finally extinguished, we once again took to hanging out of the window, waiting for the smoke to disperse a bit before surveying the damage. After about ten minutes, we decided to extract the offending Fimo from the oven. Everything we'd made, everything we'd spent hours carefully crafting, was ruined. Not just over-cooked, not just burnt, but literally carbonised. We now have a variety of interestingly-shaped pieces of charred Fimo:



Next artistic endeavour? Charcoal drawing.

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