THIS.  Now you might be looking at this nicely organized selection of murrini (chips from complex glass canes) and wondering what could possibly be insane about this, right?  RIGHT? 

HA!  Ok, well it all began like this:  I was surfing LE when i stumbled across a thread discussing commercial murrini… i thought cool, i could use a few more – i LOVE murrini (but so far haven’t developed a burning desire to make my own). 

So I clicked through a few pages and links on the mentioned supplier’s site and found several murrini styles i liked.  Nothing insane there, right?  Just  appreciating all the pretty colours… a harmless bit of window shopping… i mean c’mon, these really are pretty aren’t they? And in styles i’d never seen before – in fact MUCH better than the meagre selection from the tiny assortment bag i purchased way back when.  So i clicked some more… cooooolll, all those complex designs in such miniature form…  No biggie,  i’ll just buy a few.  Yeah.  a few.

Next thing i know, all of THESE showed up at my house.  Ummm…ok.  Bit more than i planned.  Or needed.  But still, there’s nothing insane here, right?  Excessive maybe, but insane?   naaahhh.  It’s like shoe shopping – when the selection is especially cute, you can’t leave the store with just one pair…They were a little dusty – as anyone would be after making the trip from Italy to Canada (via the US) – so i figured i better wash them before putting them away.  (Don’t ask me why,  I have no idea.)  So guess what i did?  I dumped all those bags into a bowl.  Yup, ALL of them.  Into ONE bowl.  And yes (in case you weren’t absolutely sure), this is when i think i crossed the line from excessive adoration to borderline insanity.  Have i mentioned that the largest of these murrini is about the width of a child’s fingernail (4-5mm)?  the smallest the size of the tip of a marker (2-3mm)???Once i actually looked into the bowl for just a moment i thought: what the hell have i done??  Whatev, it was too late to worry about it so i swished the pile around to clean them, scooped them out onto a towel and started the sorting process.  

And yes, that’s when i fully crossed the line from borderline  to complete and utter  insanity.  It took me three days (on and off) to sort that mixed up pile of murrini by size, pattern, shape and colour.  And you know what?  I ENJOYED it!  For some bizarre reason, I found the process soothing: as i created each pattern pile it helped me come up with ideas of how i could integrate each murrini style into a potential bead design. 

Now, considering i have bins of commercial seed/glass beads i’ve refused to touch for years because they’re all mixed together, you can understand why i’m in a bit of a shock??

Ahh well… i suppose that’s the magic of hot glass: it’s so unrestricted, even what should have been a tedious chore like this, can develop into an exciting opportunity for new design directions. 

New beads with these murrini should be coming soon…