Feb. 28, 2025 Critter Week and Fox Contest Winners!

Happy Friday! As I type this blog, my face is smiling as I just went through all the entries of the contest (almost 200!) and I’m so tickled with ALL of the suggestions. What fun. There is only one Fox design, however, since everyone was suggesting both male and female names I picked TWO winners. Our male fox’s name is Chester and our female fox’s name is Clair.

Congratulations to Sharon Pino who has a fox that visits their house regularly and they lovingly named him Chester. She even emailed me a photo of Chester with her son. That’s pretty special! Photo shared with Sharon’s permission. ;)



Our second winner is Carol Munsell. She suggested the name Clair (short for Clair de lune) which she told me is French for “moonlight”. There was a piano masterpiece written by French composer Claude Debussy titled Clair de lune, which was often described as having a gorgeous melody that was quiet and dreamy in nature. I’ve heard this song for years and never knew what it was called. Listen to it here if you have a moment to enjoy it. (It’s a YouTube video so sorry if there is an Ad first...but it's worth a listen).

Guy and I have some foxes that sometimes pass through our back yard, often seen only in the moonlight. I already had my Fox Project finished before I looked at all the entries. My foxes were under the MOONLIGHT, and listening to this song while looking at the project just made my heart melt!

 Meet Chester and Clair ❤️

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Housekeeping notes:
For those who are new, my Murrini are all COE 96 made with Oceanside glass. These cuties will go on sale tomorrow, Saturday, March 1 at Noon Central Time.

This upcoming week my online store will be closed for a few days while I spend some time with my family. Also, March has an extra Saturday in it, so I wanted to make sure to let you know I’m still just posting on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month. So here is a quick visual of March and the first weekend in April. 

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This week’s Murrini:

Chester and Clair Fox Kits 🦊

What a treat these have been to work with. A single fox consists of a head, tail and body. Packages will be sold by weight and will either have 2 heads/tails/bodies or 3 heads/tails/bodies. The kits that have two foxes will have murrini on the larger side and the kits with three foxes will have murrini on the smaller side. The photo above shows all the sizes from smaller to larger (top to bottom). As seen below, the foxes are cutest at a tack fuse or light contour fuse, but they lose their outer shape in a heavy contour or full fuse. The outer eye is a transparent bronze, so on clear the outline of the eye will be transparent. I would suggest snipping the canes in half, then each half in half, then those halves in half to make each cane into 16 equal parts. 

NEW! Cat Eyes

Being a cat lover, I wanted to create some eyes that I could use on a stand-up cat. Sizes of eyes will vary in each package, giving you nice options for different sized animals. These are best at a tack fuse, but I fully fused some into dots and also fully fused one onto clear just to test them. I definitely prefer them tacked so the points remain. 


Instructions on how to make this stand up black cat are a little bit furr-ther down in the blog. 🤣

Above are the eyes tack fused (upper left) but the rest fully fused.

Tropical Ted and NEW Tropical Tena!
Tropical Ted made his debut a few weeks ago, but he was longing for a girlfriend! Meet Tropical Tena. She is made of purple transparent and opals. They are lovely tack to fully fused. I’ll have Ted and Tena packaged as a DUO, as well as these gorgeous fish as singles.

Note: in the Duo, they are 1oz. packages with 2 Teds and 2 Tenas. (they are on the larger side). Singles will also be sold in 1oz. packages and there will be 4-5 canes in each package (most on the larger side).


Here they are in identical scenes. The one on the left is tack fused and the one on the right is fully fused. I do love the full fuse where the clear around the tail blends into the background, but I’m also a big fan of dimension.

Woodie the Woodpecker

Woodie is back! This sweet bird is best at a light tack fuse to retain his outer shape. He’s ready to start pecking on your tree scenes! 

Bee Kits

Bee kits are back! Each Bee consists of a head (not pictured), body and two wings. Kits/packages will have 3 heads, 3 bodies, and 6 wings. Sizes of the bees will vary in each package. Lisa made sure the wings and heads were the perfect size for each body. (As usual, she worked really hard on all the sizes this week.) They are made with Oceanside’s Sunflower, Black, and White. 

The bee on the left is at a light tack fuse. The bee on the right is at a full fuse. I think both work great but personally I’m a fan of the tack fuse.

Critter Eyes

Also back are regular round Critter Eyes. They have a slight oval pupil that is surrounded with brown and blue with a white highlight in each eye. These are adorable tack fused to fully fused. I also love to snip them down into 4-5mm pieces and fully fuse them into eye dots. They are pretty cool this way and it gives them a totally different look when tacked onto your projects.

The upper left  eye is fully fused onto clear and the upper right eye is lightly tack fused but is a bit difficult to see that it is flat, not rounded. These bottom eyes are “eye dots” that have simply been snipped and fully fused. They have a rounder appearance than the flatter tack fused version. All are great!

Miss Ladybug

What is Critter Week without our Ladybug? I’m saying that with my British accent and feel like somehow we need a Lordbug! 🤣 Miss Lady is best at a light tack fuse to retain her shape and to keep her dots from being pulled inward. She’ll be packaged with various sizes, but mostly in the medium size range. 

Tack Fuse Monarchs

I’ve had many requests to remake this color of a Monarch, so I made several batches. I have to admit this is my favorite version of her. She is a tack fuse Murrini. What makes her special is her outer shape, which rounds out quickly in too warm of a top temperature. For the easiest way I've found to snip the butterflies, see my tutorial in the Tips/Tutorial section of the website.

The tack fused version is on the left and the fully fused version is on the right. Clearly the light tack fused shows her with her intended frilly wings.

Willie Worm Kit



In each kit you'll get one each of the 8 different two-inch twistie canes (shown in the photos) and one Critter Antennae cane. Snip the twisted canes into pieces and FULLY FUSE into dots. I usually snip into 8 -10 pieces (around 1/4 inch). Snip some slightly longer than others to get varying sized dots for your Willie. Adorn the head with a thinly sliced antennae and voila! Willie is ready to climb around in your garden. The Antennae cane will snip down into sixteen 3mm slices, so you'll have 16 3mm murrini from the one cane. On occasion the twisties with outer shapes can be trickier to snip, therefore I’ll have the 1.5oz. packages priced as the 1oz. price of $18 just in case of mis-snips.

Critter Antennas

Your package of Antennae will certainly look like a bunch of all black canes! But hold it to the light and you’ll see the inner design. Tack fused to fully fused, these cuties can work on so many different critters. Sizes may vary slightly in each order.


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SECONDS: I have a few nice seconds this week:

SECONDS Bee Kits (no heads included in the seconds)

The SECONDS Bee Kits have bodies that are either at the very beginning of the pull, toward the end where the lines are starting to wiggle, or there might be a few pin holes or chipped exteriors. Same for the wings as far as beginning or toward the end of the pull. However, they are still quite lovely!

SECONDS Cat Eyes

The SECONDS Cat Eyes are also a bit early or late in the pull, but you’ll also see some little pinholes where air was trapped. These should close up nicely in a fuse as they are tiny. 

SECONDS Critter Eyes
The SECONDS Critter Eyes are toward the end of the pull and have lots of white surrounding the pupil. Sizes in each order will vary greatly from large to small with LOTS of tinies. 

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This week’s project!
Technology is wonderful but sometimes spooky. I have the capability to create AI graphics via an online graphics company that I subscribe to annually. I typed in “foxes in the forest at night, with a full moon on a stone fence with butterflies and bees”. This is what AI generated for me:

It was nearly exact to the vision I had in my head. So this is how I began my project!


First I started with an 8X8 piece of blue swirl Oceanside glass. It was transparent and I wanted the lighter parts to stand out, so I also cut a piece of 3mm white glass to go underneath it. If you look closely on the right, you can see the white square underneath is about 3/8 inch shorter than the blue glass. I didn’t want to risk any of the white glass showing, so I allowed for around 1/8+ inch of the blue to overhang the white. 

Next I took some Oceanside Charcoal stringers and just tapered them in a flame for branches.


I wanted to create a moon with an outer glow. I took white powder and sprinkled it in a circle underneath my moon. I knew the powder would not show up too much so I wasn’t too nervous here. I sat my circle on top (vanilla cream I think!) and then took Grey FINE frit and made pretty thick dollops around to create the craters in the moon. After this, I placed some Charcoal Gray glass down that would be for the background trees and placed my stringer branches. I wasn’t worried about them looking too perfect as the foreground trees would cover a lot of them up.


At the bottom I put fern green and lime green frit along the area I knew would be under the stone arch and then the foreground frit was medium sized dark green with fine black sprinkled in as well. I wanted it to be dark. I put it in for a full fuse. My path was almond and chocolate fine frit.

Here we are after the first full fuse. I'm in love with the moon even tho the white powder frit didn't really show up after the full fuse.

I put black NOODLES in a torch to pull them apart and make wiggly branches for my foreground trees. I wanted them bigger than the background branches, so I opted for noodles vs. stringer. This was the first time I think I’ve tried this and it worked pretty well!

Next I cut out a general shape of the stone arch and used some brown swirl Oceanside glass that I had. I didn’t have a number on it, but it had a wonderful variegated look to it. I traced off the arch and then just scored and broke it apart and then reassembled it with the “stones” having just a tiny space all around them. I knew in a contour fuse they’d have a nice rounded but individual look.

Once my fence was done, I made some black trees. I did use my Taurus saw here as I didn’t want to have score lines in my foreground trees. I placed the black noodles all around and put it back in the kiln for a contour fuse. 

My stone fence turned out a bit darker than expected, but I still like it very much. I put fine frit around the top of the stone wall to look like the moon was shining on moss and flowers. I put more fine frit on the path area. I put some transparent green leaves around the tree bases along with some black medium frit. Next came my Critters. Chester and Clair were place on and under the archway, the butterfly hid an area of the background trees that I didn’t care for 😉, Miss Ladybug is in the foreground and Woodie has his place up high in the trees. This time I put the project in for a light tack fuse and held the anneal for 5 hours just to give it plenty of time to relax…then came down slowly 150 per hour until it was room temperature. 

Interestingly I could give this project different looks. In the above photo I have a light shining just behind the moon and it gives it the glow I was hoping for from the white powder. OH! I also forgot to mention I forgot to put clear powder down in the initial full fuse between the white and blue streaky glass and you can see that I caught some bubbles! Not the end of the world because they made for great stars…but could have been not so desirable had it been a different project!

This one has no light behind it at all and the background glass is evenly blue.


And in the window. This caused the foreground to show some of the blue, too. Gotta say I’m OVER THE MOON with this project!

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Free Standing Cat
I used my Taurus Saw to cut out the cat shape that I had traced out on 3mm black glass. I placed my Cat Eye Murrini and put it in for a good solid tack fuse (but not a contour fuse). Top temp in my kilns for a light tack fuse is around 1305-1310. Contour top temp is around 1330-1340. I just kept this at 1305, but held that temp for 15 minutes. 

After the initial tack fuse, the next step was to slump the cat over my mold, but since I was afraid he might slide down, I placed a dam at the bottom with some triangles of Silkemat just BARELY touching the glass. I looked at the back of the mold for a number, but it just said CPI 2010. Thank you to Catie Callery for letting us know it is GM81 Bend-it Mold by Creative Paradise!! Thanks Catie!


After he slumped, I took him off and yes he stands…but barely. A good sneeze would blow him over. I should have added an additional inch to the length under the tail at the very bottom as he just needed a little bit more glass underneath to stand securely. 

Very quick and simple to make if you have a ring saw…and oh so CUTE!

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Willie in the Trees Project

This was a random idea that I had, but it ended up being kind of cool! I wanted to show you all the twisties as Willie Worms but was feeling like it needed to be outside. So I cut a 3X12 piece of 3mm clear glass and took it outside to my giant Cottonwood tree and found a place that it would actually sit without me holding it. I took a sharpie and drew along the lines of the bark and took the glass inside and put my caterpillars along the edges of where the bark would be. I tack fused them on and then took the piece back out to the tree and placed it again. This time the caterpillars had bark to crawl on. It’s much more impressive in person 🤣 but was fun to do something different.
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Hints on the Horizon:

Coming on Saturday, March 15... The 3 P’s! Another new critter will be joining the group, Purrfect Sophie the Cat! One of the P’s will also be Pansies…but the last P is the biggest surprise. I can’t wait for you to see it! HOWEVER…that Saturday I’ll actually be in my car when it comes time to make them live on my website, so hang in there with me if my WiFi is sketchy when I pull over to post at NOON. I think it should be fine, but wanted to give you a heads up that you may need to refresh your screens a few times. Packages should still go out on Monday…but it might be Tuesday morning that week. 😃
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Helpful Links:
If you use COE 90, be sure to shop Lori’s beautiful murrini and mille options found at Wilderness Glass.

Oceanside's recommended Firing Schedules.

If you are looking for COE 96 stringer or pre-fused dots, Joni pulls matching stringer for the items I have each week. Find her beautiful work at Aggie Glass Designs.

If you are looking for Mike LaChance’s fusible COE 96 handcrafted Bails, find his unique work at Mike’s Innovative Glass.

For beautiful COE96 frit blends, check out Val Cox's website.

My favorite flattening technique is from a tutorial by Nancy Sala. It’s worth the $8 for the excellent tips she gives. Once purchased and she sees your order, she will email you the tutorial in a PDF.


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