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Old 2007-08-14, 7:40pm
RyanTheNumberImp RyanTheNumberImp is offline
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Join Date: Oct 30, 2005
Location: Calgary, Canada
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The same process applies to the fish, work slowly and carefully. I find that being able to narrow down the flame is very helpful when placing murrini close together. I love my lynx


Again, slowing adding murrini and working them in carefully into the surface.


Here I am applying the encasing, it is important to apply the encasing so that you don't have to move the glass around a lot during the final shaping. You really don't want to smear the design underneath it.


Switched the punty and finishing the other side:


Now at this point you could finish the bead, but I like to continue with a second layer for depth.

Adding a layer of cane over the murrini is almost painful, but it does look nice in the finished bead and my cane doesn't obstruct much.

Just like with the first steps, I am again adding silvered ivory. Try to set it up so that it partially covers the starfish. Being able to look behind the various elements of the bead and see even more behind them is amazing.
The second layer is melted in at least partially smoothly since I dont want to be adding pounds of glass to round it out. I have also been adding more fish.


After working the murrini in again, I begin the final encasing:




The bottom of the marble where all the cane ends is quite messy, and I choose to cover it with some dark silver plum. You may or may not want to do this, depending on how the bottom looks. I have never done so on a bead.

Finally, I just carefully start shaping it:

It was a pretty long process that I didn't really do properly (hey, all I have is a block of brass with a hole drilled into it which I made, and some paraffin wax...)

You can see a bit of smearing, I still haven't gotten the technique down properly. I am sure there are better ways of applying murrini, my method was mostly derived from trial and error.

When you are making aquarium beads, always try to distort the lower layers as little as possible. Since they tend to be larger than normal beads, cracking isn't as much of a problem so I like to keep the base bead cool. When encasing, don't let the glass move around. If you want a different shape, add clear there, dont shift it around. When melting in layers of encasing do so carefully and help it along with tools if you need to.

An aquarium bead can be a lot of work, but they are beautiful.

You can see my tutorial on fire polishing murrini in a kiln here:
http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=63045
This isn't necessary, but I found that it helped a bit.

I will try to make a tutorial on making simple fish murrini as well, although doing so takes a lot of glass and time.
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Last edited by RyanTheNumberImp; 2007-08-14 at 10:49pm.
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