Sunday, October 24, 2010

The birth of the Christmas Bird

I’m not really the kind of bead maker who does anything special for the holidays, but this year there has been a bit of a change. Thanks to a special order pair of earrings, and the confluence of several ideas, I am making Christmas birds. How did this come about? I will try and explain.
First, I have been in quite a swirly mood lately. Twirls on the sides of fish, and swirls on the sides of beads have become the norm. Just a phase I suppose. Then I got an email from someone who wanted a pair of earrings to match a particular dress for his wife. I looked at the photos he sent and- wait, what is that I see- are those paisleys? And did he just ask if I ever make anything with swirls on them? Oh dear, it looked like I was going to be heading into dangerous waters. My oh-so-literal mind couldn’t just try and put paisleys on beads. I had to go the whole way and make 3-D paisleys.
As soon as I’d made the first one, I thought, “Wow, what a cool bird that would make” That idea just sat in my brain for a couple of days while I worked on some more earring choices and some other things I wanted to get done. When I made a nice red and green fish a couple of days later, I had to stop myself from changing directions in the middle and trying my first bird. It was going to be a nice fish, and I didn’t want to mess with it. But the next bead had to be a bird. And it had to be the same colors as that fish.
That little bird is now sitting on my glass table, modeling for the newest item in my repertoire- Christmas bird earrings.
Here’s the quick breakdown of the process: twirls and swirls-customer photos- paisleys- red and green fish- Christmas bird

Saturday, October 2, 2010

The cover of the Autumn Flow!

The cover of The Flow..............My tut bead- in different colors

I was pleasantly surprised when the mail arrived a couple of days ago. There was a package with three of my own personal copies of The Flow magazine, a magazine specifically for people who make lampwork glass. And my tutorial was inside. The first time anything other than a picture of one of my beads has been published. And my name was right there on the cover. There's lots of wonderful information inside- plenty of tuts and pictures! Go here to order your very own copy- I'm keeping all of mine! https://www.theflowmagazine.com/index.htm


I got so excited that I started singing- gonna get me name upon the cover, gonna buy five copies for my brother, gonna get my lampwork tut on the cover of the autumn Flow.....
With thanks to Shel Silverstein!