FAQ's / About Us
Who are Lori & Kim? Lori is Lori Peterson (@loribeads just about everywhere) and Kim is Kim Milan (Kimbeads/KWat) and we've been friends for many, many years. We decided that since we both make beads it might be fun to do something together and the murrini making business was born (in 2009!!)
What are murrini? Murrini cane is made by building a picture or pattern in glass and pulling it down into a much smaller picture or pattern, much like Christmas candy is made. These canes are snipped into little pieces and can be used to melt onto a glass bead, fused onto a sheet of glass or even suspended in resin to create jewelry, decorative items and whatever else your imagination tells you to do with them. If you've ever heard the term "millifiore" well, that's when a lot of these little pieces of glass are put into one design.
How do I use them for beadmaking? There are many ways to apply murrini to a hot bead and each way will yield a slightly different result.
If you want the murrini to spread and the center to recede, warm up the murrini well in the back of the flame while getting the base bead just hot enough for the murrini to stick. As you melt the murrini down flat, pat and melt, pat and melt until flush and then give it a really good heating until it has spread as far as you want it to spread. Some murrini designs will spread better than others so keep that in mind.
If you want the murrini center to stay visible but you don't want to encase it in clear, try to get the base bead very hot while just barely warming up the murrini in the back of the flame. When you apply the murrini, gently push it down into the hot bead slightly. Melt gently and keep patting as you go. Alternatively, you can put a little dot of clear on the top and pat and melt.
What COE are the murrini? All the murrini we make are clearly marked with their respective COE. We make murrini in COE 104, COE 96 and COE 90. Some of our COE 104 murrini have small amounds of furnace glass (COE 96) like raku or chalcedony.
Murrini Central