Lampwork Bead set---3 pink gravity swirl hearts

"Gravity Swirl" is the term I use for the technique of striping the bead hole to hole, heating the center, and allowing the glass to sag, bending the stripe. This is more commonly done with solid beads, because if you heat a hollow bead too much, it collapses. These particular beads are made with the american glass, bullseye, which has a particularly nice palette of pinks and purples---ranging from the very soft and nearly translucent pink in the lightest bead to the richer colors shown in the darker bead, which illustrate another fun quality of some glasses, that of developing subtle color shifts in the flame. Hearts start out as plain round beads that are then mashed into ovals, cut (with an ordinary butter knife:) and raked on one end to give the top of the heart shape; and shaped on the other by touching a hot rod of glass and pulling gently. They're a very fun and sensuous shape to do. All three beads are hollow and three views of the set are shown; you will receive these exact beads. Like all my work, they're fully annealed and cleaned. Hollow beads may look fragile, but as I discovered dropping them on concrete floors many many times, they're quite durable. Convo or email me if you have further questions about this item, or see my website to learn more about my working techniques.