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Take some mille chips (the junk left over from cutting slices) and stick them all over a mid-size clear gather -- then encase deeply and make a marble with a storm of confetti inside. That's the theory.

What went wrong? Everything. I didn't clean my metal pontils and they smmoked the glass at the poles; the mille melted in some spots and not others; there are bubbles; I twisted the gather and the smoke marks got inside; what a mess.

Still, despite its many flaws, it reminds me of those old superballs they invented when I was still a kid -- the clear kind with coloured confetti inside -- and I want to try again.