Read the Instructions!

I decided I needed a toaster oven for the polymer clay parts of my puppets, because heating up the kitchen oven for such small pieces was a waste (not to mention the health warnings against using the same oven for food and clay). So I bought one. I set it up. I read the directions. I re-read the directions. Then I put my pieces in to bake.

They burned to a crisp (see "after" in the image below).

After grieving over the hour or so of work I'd lost in mixing the clay to a matching shade of gray, I decided that the oven must be broken, or have some bad wiring. I mean, I'd put it in for less than the recommended time, and it was burned to the point of complete discoloration. I decided to return it.

Before I did, though, I re-re-read the instructions. Not surprisingly, when I'd read the numbers before, I'd switched the times between the different temperatures--despite my foreseeing such a thing and trying to prevent it. Sometimes I really think I must be dyslexic.

[And now, the power of MS Paint allows you to see what I'm talking about. The large "before" piece is the color that the smaller pieces were before they went in the oven. I decided to paint them rather than make new ones.]