I call it murrini, but it’s murrina (singular) and murrine (plural). I see most other lampwork artists spell it murrini and I personally prefer that too. I make my own murrini for my beads, mostly flowers but also barnacles and other “things”. I just watched a long video of Loren Stump making a face murrini – wow! I was inspired to make my own eye cane and I’m pretty happy with my first attempt, it actually looks like an eye. 🙂
So, my murrini tends to be on the small side, usually 2-3mm wide. I love tiny details, always have. I remember as a child, using my grandmother’s cuticle scissors to cut out tiny little paper dolls to fit inside their blue glass genie bottle (after searching for one just like it online, I discovered it was actually an old Jim Beam bottle!).
Okay, the tutorial/tip:
What I use is a pvc end cap (about 2 inches wide) and wheeled glass nippers.
This is about how thick I cut my murrini (the part below the wheels).
I have to check to make sure I’ve placed it straight between the cutting wheels.
I place it right over my little cup, wheels facing down and nip it.
I would normally hold the murrini stick with my hand, but then you wouldn’t be able to see, right? Plus, sometimes I cut pieces that are a little too long but not quite long enough to have my fingers close to the blades holding it. I just cup my hand over the top to keep the top half from flying around the room.
Much easier to hold the long murrini stick. I can snip these pretty quickly this way.
After a couple cuts I just get a feel for how much to lower the stick and chop- chop- chop.
And here are my cut pieces of murrini (purple roses)… contained in the cup.
Doesn’t look like I was very consistent, you say? That’s ok, I just take the longer ones and stick them back in the glass nippers, cupping my hand over the top if it’s too short to hold (watch out for the blades).
These were cut pretty short. I just lay them on my workbench tile, spot heat my bead and press my bead onto the murrini so it sticks. I can get away with doing it like that when they’re small, larger diameters would probably crack.
As I mentioned earlier, I usually keep my murrini in stick form and just plunge into my heated bead. Sometimes I use chips like this, for surface decoration, but mostly sticks.
I don’t bother pulling points either but this would probably help in that process.
Melt- pull- snip right into the cup and repeat.
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~*Tracy*~
TracyBeads.com 