This is not a great attempt, but I'm happy with the proof of concept and believe it will get better with practice. I've still got 2 of the twisties left to practice with.
lessons learned:
1. it may matter which direction the twistie is melted while spiraling onto another surface, it seemed that my twists were getting "untwisted", but this is totally unverified, I need to test this idea next time.
2. it's really tough to make the spiral directly on the bead, make the spiral with the twistie alone first, garage in kiln, then apply to target bead
3. don't freak out if the spiral gets wonky with melting etc, just use a stringer to redo the spiral twist in the center at the end of melt-in.