Handcrafted Beads Shop along the Oregon Coast

Along the Oregon Coast is where you will find beautiful glass art, such as sea life and animal sculpture, bowls, platters, floats, handcrafted bead jewelry, and other handcrafted items from local artists. They also offer lessons to create your unique custom project.

We stopped by at Heartsong Beads. Inside the shop is a huge selection of handmade lampwork glass beads by owner/artist Susan Hanson. Heartsong Beads is known for its friendly and helpful services and provides a warm, creative atmosphere for its customers.

Heartsong is one of the destination stop for bead lovers on the Oregon Coast .

My love to lampwork beads started when I was into handmade jewelries, I bought my lampwork beads from different artisan stores. I love how the lampwork glass beads were made, the art, the design and the intensive labor.

Lampwork is a type of glasswork used to create smaller glass objects using a fixed directional flame to melt the glass, using lamp working tools and gravity to shape the piece. It is a very different process from glass blowing which as the name suggests uses a blowpipe to inflate a glass gob or gather to form a cylindrical glass shape which can then be shaped with glass blowing tools. These small handcrafted lampwork pieces are the most time consuming method of making glass beads as each art bead is individually made over a flame, resulting in labor intensive but beautifully custom-made one of a kind beads.

Lampworking is used to create artwork, including beads, figurines, marbles, small vessels, Christmas tree ornaments, and much more. It is also used to create scientific instruments as well as glass models of animal and botanical subjects.