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.

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

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:

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.

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. 

Willie in the Trees Project