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