It all started with thinking about Joy, and then my first "Joy" blog post....sketching a chickadee on some scrap paper at work which led to the bangle idea (drafted below the bird)....
That's where inspiration can begin. Just letting it flow and this is what comes of it. Then I get obsessed. I started Googling chickadees so much that Google has started suggesting articles on them for me. (Did you know that they are a year-round bird here in Michigan but we only see them most in the winter?)
I was originally considering the the feather bangles that I had already made. The chickadee feathers alone don't have much design going on. Layered together they make some really great patterns on the bird. So I sketched out a quick idea focusing on the patterning of the bird (above, to the right corner, on the paper with the chickadee) and then I could not get it out of my head.
I started stylizing this draft into my peyote graph paper. I first tried to copy the original sketch in with Gimp, but I decided that it was going to be easier to draft it by hand.
I chose bead colors from what I have on-hand. Apparently I'm out of the tan I use a lot and it's on backorder so I picked something close for the back (between the wings) and tail. That color turned out a little more pink than I expected it to, which wouldn't bother me but there's something not quite right with the pink and white around the "tail" design part. I realized that I wasn't sure about the color and layout about 3/4 of the way through the bangle. It may not bother me so much after wearing it for a while but right now I think I might make an entirely new bangle in the tan that I usually use (when it comes back in stock) and I'll play with redesigning the tail.
The "head" and "wings" area of this bangle I absolutely love though. I have some idea on what I should on a redesign but I'm not going to dig back into it until I've let it be for a while. Sometimes we are our own hardest critics.
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