Springing into Easter

I’ve never felt like I could put together a great Easter bracelet. Last year I struggled to put together even a small combination, and I dismantled it shortly after. At the time, I lamented how all my combinations felt like spring combinations instead of Easter combinations.

This year I thought about skipping Easter entirely. Then I realized that I was overthinking the concept. I know that spring and Easter aren’t exactly the same thing, but I can’t help but connect the two. Easter arrives just as spring is kicking in here. And I always look forward to the start of spring. So, why can’t an Easter combination be spring-like? And, I had the perfect theme right under my nose: my bird feeder bracelet!

The last incarnation of my bird feeder bracelet was quite wintry. At that time, the most common visitors were the cardinals, chickadees, and dark-eyed juncos. Now that the weather is warming up, the goldfinches are already starting to come back and shed their winter colours. I can’t wait to see their bright yellows again! And I found a great artisan bead to represent them. I found a few yellows that were the right shade, but didn’t mix in the white and black. Without the mix, the bead just didn’t feel right. So I was very pleased when I found this artisan, even if the yellow is a bit paler than the birds.

And, I finally found my blue jay bead! I’ve been looking for one with the right mix of lighter and darker shades, but most had too much white or didn’t have a mix of blues. Even when I came across the blue swirl artisan, I wasn’t sure it was the one until I sent the picture of the bead to a friend, alongside a picture of a blue jay to ask her opinion. Once I saw the two side-by-side, my mind was made up. Finding a bead to represent the blue jays was almost as hard as getting a decent picture of one at my feeder!

I still haven’t found the perfect bead to represent the chickadees, but the goldfinch and blue jay beads give me hope.

After adding the beads for the birds, I pulled my greens to represent the shrubbery that the birds hang out in near the feeder. Or, should I say, the shrubbery that the birds used to hang out in. We had an influx of rabbits this year that destroyed two of the three bushes! I wish I had a rabbit bead to represent the cheeky rabbits, much like my squirrel bead represented the squirrels that raided the feeder. At least there is good news on that front: for Christmas my husband gifted me a “squirrel buster” bird feeder. The squirrels still hang out, but they can no longer raid the feeder. Now they’re reduced to waiting for whatever the birds drop. Which is still quite a bit!

While we still have some snow on the ground (and more in the forecast), it really is beginning to feel like spring here. So much so that I’ve been trying to get some of my planters into place. Too bad they are still frozen quite solid to the ground! But at least I have my bracelet to keep me focused on what is to come!