Knobby murrini ends offcuts breath new life ;-)

Yup, that would be the headline at my house.

I have been absolutely busting my boiler to catch up on my murrini orders for Affordable Inspiration (http://www.affordableinspiration.com.au/) because the lovely Kerry has managed to sell out of quite a few and is about to start a new line of rose murrini slices for me too..... YAY!

I have been mady making a nice range of different colours of rose murrini cane in soft glass (104coe) and getting them pulled, annealled, sliced, reheated, pulled to final diameter then annealled cut and packaged has been a LOT of hard work.... but fun too!  I made a pink boro cane for myself just for some fun in the midst of this rose-murrini-fest and here it came out.... quite nicely if I do say so myself!

After I  made these canes I am usual put my offcut ends into a container (where I keep all the bits off the ends of murrini pulls..... just in case).  Looking at the ends I noticed that there was still a bit of pattern left, that might make a nice pendant or something, so after some reheating and reintroduction to the flame.... it did!  There was not a great deal of pattern left but after some judicious moving of glass it came out as a very nice pendant, but with a clear glass hole in the middle.... on the fly I grabbed some stamen cane and poked it in from the back.... voila, rose with stamen.....

My soft glass adventures came out fairly well too, with this murrini using premium handpulled dark pink, an expensive glass (thanks to price of precious metals) but a lovely colour glass.  I was very happy with this one and I think Kerry's customers will like them too.... even better!

I EVEN tried an exercise in patience last night and used some Devardi Salmon pink with transparent cranberry inbetween the petals. I now have a LOT of salmon coloured frit on my desk, but if they come out half as nice as I think they might, it will have been totally worth it!