Practice, Practice, Practice Creating Hollow Glass Beads

As I continue my "Practice, Practice, Practice" work with hollow beads, I have some results of recent work to share with you.

The technique I used was creating the two sides of the bead on a 3/32" mandrel and then connecting the two sides and closing the gap. Shaping the bead in the heat and allowing the internal air to heat up and inflate the hollow resulted in the bead sets below.

First up, This hollow features CiM Bewitched. This glass is a "streamer" glass with a clear base with indigo and purple streamers. 

It created the hollow and shaped it into the sphere and then added the dots of Double Helix Kalypso.

 Just a touch of reduction brought the multiple hue metallic shine to the surface of each dots. The spacer beads are CiM Bewitched.

I was lucky to get a CiM Seconds rod bundle back in April at Nortel and I have started to try a few of the rods in this selection. 

The first unlabelled rod in the bundle looks like possibly CiM Nymph or Persian Green.

This is a simple hollow that shows the misty color so beautifully.

This next hollow was simply made with with the same as above with some streams of CiM Amazon Misty and Double Helix Melia. 

The striations of the silver glass created a pretty mother of pearl reaction that has just a hint of a sparkle when it is closely observed. 

It is unfortunately that it is very difficult to capture in a photograph. 

The spacers are CiM Aiko, a vivid transparent teal green that compliments the hollow focal bead.

The next bead set is simply CiM Aiko. I am pleased with this hollow!

It is such a beautiful vivid transparent teal green. 

The spacers are also CiM Aiko.

The next rod I tried in the CiM Seconds Mystery bundle created these hollows sets below. 

As the rods are not labelled, I am guessing that it may be related to Cerulean or another CiM transparent aqua blue.

A lovely trio of hollows with matching spacers!

This glass does have some micro bubbles suspended in the glass... like little bubbles in the ocean!

Finally, a bead set with a single hollow with 2 spacers on each side.

How do you think I did with my session of hollow bead making?

These will be going up on Etsy over the next day or so.

It looks like CiM Aiko, Cerulean and Nymph are not currently available. 

CiM Bewitched is showing in stock in the online shopping cart at Nortel.
Reach out to Jean or Jennifer at Nortel for your glassy needs!

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