The swirly patterns, mixed with some transparency, look so much like everyday plastic to me. The problem is that we can't all be in the same room with strands and talk as a group, avoiding the inevitable chaos of trying to understand someone's best efforts at an explanation in an online forum. I just won a strand last night on "that auction" site. I have gotten a good opinion on them, but still worry about what I will see when they actually arrive. At least the ones I won last night are big!! I posted a pic of the smaller ones I got today. Though it is hard to see, some of the beads you can literally see all the way through them. I picture resin as more uniform in composition but maybe it isn't. I apologize for being so redundant. I just have fallen in love with these beads and want to know, as much as I can, what I am buying, as they are not cheap. Steve