01.
Pattern Bar
This tiny pattern bar is my first attempt at faux murrine. I used 3mm thick, 1/4″ wide strips of French Vanilla sheet glass surrounding Turquoise Blue 2mm stringer. I’ve dammed it and put ceramic fiber paper between glass and dam. Below you can see the fused end product. It’s flattened out, as expected, but the color combination is pretty pleasing. This faux murrine will form one of the pendants.
02.
Custom Frit
I had some stringer left over from other projects (the Blue Bubble Plate, 2mm Stringer Bowl, and the 5mm Stringer Bowl) and decided to make my own multicolor frit. I used tile nippers to chip the small pieces, then stirred in GlasTac Gel to hold them together.
03.
Frit Sandwich
Because I wasn’t sure how the frit would spread, I used a 1 x 1 inch, 2mm thick, piece of clear Tekta glass on top, and two similar pieces on the bottom, to create the necessary 6mm overall thickness, not taking into account the frit.
04.
Where There’s Space
All of these pendants were fired when there was spare shelf space along with larger projects. As you can see if you click and zoom in, they’re all sandwiched between clear glass.
05.
Fused Glass Cabachons
These are the cabachons that were capped with clear glass and thus fused into nice shapes.
06.
Cold Working
Using diamond hand lap pads, I worked the edges of the frit and faux murrine pendants, giving them a smooth matte finish all around.
07.
Orange Murrine Pendants
The orange murrine pendants (the photo only shows one) were not cold worked and are glossy all around.
08.
Vanilla and Turquoise
Like the custom frit pendants, the vanilla and turquoise pendant also has a smooth matte finish on its edge.
09.
Last One
Just for the sake of completeness, here’s a close-up of one of the frit pendants.
Results
Final Result
I’m surprised at how much I enjoy making fused glass jewelry. Originally it seemed too small and fussy. Add to that, I’m not really a jewelry person. But there’s something fascinating about the small patterns and mix of colors that might be too busy for larger work. Jewelry definitely earns a place in the kiln.
FULL FUSING SCHEDULE FOR FAUX MURRINI (RUN TIME 10:31)*
| SEGMENT | RATE (deg F / hour) | TEMPERATURE (F) | HOLD (hours:minutes) |
| 1 | 350 | 1225 | :45 |
| 2 | 600 | 1500 | :30 |
| 3 | AFAP | 900 | 2:00 |
| 4 | 100 | 700 | OFF |
* The firing schedules may be designed for other projects that were fired with this one. Everything was fired in a Paragon GL-22AD.