How to use murrini cane by
Greg Chase.
Basically the way I use cane:
1) I cut twice the number of
murrini I think I'm going to need (I'm constantly dropping the little buggers,
cracking them, smearing, etc. always have extra). I cut them about 1/8 inch
thick. Smaller and they tend to distort when I heat them and larger and they're
just a waste.
2) Put them on the torch marver to keep them warm. If
they're shocky I'll keep them in the kiln to warm them up. A coffee cup warmer
is a good devise to use too.
3) Find the right tweezers. Okay, what you
want: you want tweezers big enough to hold the chip without it moving around,
but small enough so you can heat the butt of the chip without heating the
tweezers too much.
4) Heat the murrini up in the back flame. You just
want it hot on it's bottom. Just kinda glowing. NOT so hot that it sticks to the
tweezers.
5) Heat the spot on the bead where you want the chip.
6)
Gently place the murrini on the bead. Press it ever so slightly so it's in good
contact with the bead. It'll kinda mushroom down ever so slightly. If you push
too much it'll smear. If not enough it'll pop off when you go to reheat
everything.
There are three different ways I use to set the
murrini:
A) You can use a stringer of you're bead color to encase around
the murrini. You want to get rid of the "L" between the murrini and the bead.
Heat up a stringer of your bead color and encase around or up to the murrini.
You want to build up the bead to the level of the murrini. If you get too much
color around the chip it will close in on the chip and make it smaller. If you
don't get enough around the chip the chip will settle down and look a little
smeary. If you're gonna heat everything up now, heat very slowly. Heating it all
up now will make for a very nice effect as the chip will be level with your
bead. See Deanna's witches for a really nice use of this effect.
B)OK, so you're not quite to the level of heating it up as in A. While
you've got the surrounding area built up you're just really not sure it's to the
correct level. Now put a blob of clear right on top of your murrini. This will
help it combat the surrounding bead and not get over taken. It will also make a
nice window effect. You end up looking into the clear to see the murrini. This
can also make for a really nice dimensional effect. "Look deep into my
bead...."
C)OK, so you're thinking: That's all really nice Greg, but jeeze! Don't ya
have anything a little, you know, easier? OK, use anything for your base, put
the murrini on as above. Now encase around the chip in clear, put clear on top
of the chip, build up in clear, basically encase the rest of the bead in clear
also. This really shows off the murrini and has the least smearing or overtaking
as everything around the chip is clear.
Susan Sheehan - Vintage Flowers -
$63.00 
