Canes out of the kiln, through the saw and .... voila!

Today I have been able to pop together one of my more recent ideas for murrini - begun yesterday with the one component cane used for making a snowflake.

When I was trying out ideas for the kaleidoscope murrini cane, I thought about the way the rectangles go together and form the round murrini and got to thinking about using the components differently to make a six sided snowflake murrini..... Snowflake murrini is something I have been wanting to do for a while, but just couldn't really think of how I was going to approach it. I wanted to get decent results that could look neat, crisp, complex and with that gorgeous symmetrical repeating pattern. I looked at some of the snowflake murrini around and other than the wonderful tonbodama style ones the japanese beadmakers use, couldn't really see what I wanted oreven work out how to do it..... along comes the rectangular repeating pattern.... hallelujah!

First off I decided roughly how I would make the component cane for this by planning it a little bit like kids when they fold the paper into six and then cut it with scissors to unfold a lovely snowflake. Here is the way I approached it:

First off I did a bit of a plan on paper

Then after making a rectangular cane very like this, I pulled it out as evenly as possible, annealed it then measuring the "good cane" divided that into six even bits and prewarmed them in the kiln. Once they had warmed up nicely I assembled them into groups of three which each made a half circle, then popped those two halves together to form the complete circle without the angst of trying to insert the last cane! I did have a really bad mishap with the last component cane...... probably because I was opening the door so much, it must have cooled off - because it cracked like a bugger and a little piece of the white section cracked off, so I had to fix it on the run a little which made the cane rather imperfect, but better than no cane at all!

Once assembled, even with the last minute disaster of the cracking cane, I popper her in the kiln and she came out this arvo..... Yay! I do think it looks rather snow-flake-ish (please ignore that big slice of rose cane to the side). they do come out quite delicate like a real snowflake (not that we see them here in Sydney..... ever). Excuse the quick photo in my hand outside as it was getting dark. Polished up I think these snowflakes would be mega-lovely... especially in a fusing project ;-)

White butterfly disaster has struck!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, well I had better come clean on here when things go.....er...... astray too!

I have been thinking about the butterfly murrini and colours and stuff and thought that I would make a white butterfly with green lobes.... hopefully it won't look like a moth dressed up as a butterfly, but it would be worth a play around at any rate.

I made the graduated green lobes which was fine and they came out really nicely. I dedided that I would put yellow surrounded by some clear for the small dots on the wings to try and make it sort of "delicate" and that turned out quite well. I made a couple blue/green dots for some extra oomph and they came out ok..... see for yourselves, this pic taken this morning just before attempting to put together for the final pull!

Being lazy and yet, in a bit of a hurry, I decided to ramp my kiln up very quickly and to avoid some crack-a-lacking when introduced into the flame put it on 560C. Well, rather than let the components soak somewhat at this temp I just couldn't wait and as soon as it it the top temp I got my first part out......... Crack time.... yep, huge big splitting nearly in half nasty cracks with bits falling off and completely ruining one half of my cane. Needless to say I was grateful for the kids all being at school, because there was some nasty swearing (even the FG one - F#@ Glass).

Once I had killed most of that side of the butterfly I was then left thinking..... what the hell do I do now? I decided to pop it back into the kiln and see if there is some decent slices to be had off the cane for fusing or polishing and left the other intact cane in there and put the lot back through a long annealling cycle. I am going to cut the one good half in half again and try putting those together in a more measured and careful manner.

Remember folks..... the murrini never forgives and is a card holding member of the Murphy's Law of cocking up!!!!!

NOT HAPPY!!!!!!