Feathers, Sticks and Felt

I’ve had a brown paper bag of pheasant feathers in my house for months now that have just been waiting for a new home.  A handful of them found their way into a vase on my dresser, but I knew there was greater potential for those little buggers.  Prior to Christmas, I thought they may get tucked into some garland or a magnolia wreath, but here I was, post holidays, and the bag still stood full.  But…the other day it came to me.  I ran outside in the frigid temps in search of a stick and found the perfect one – which my 5 year old Maxie cried about it being her “snow stick.”  Drama eventually settled and I continued on the project with her help (and smiles).

I drilled a few vertical holes and poked a feather into each one creating a stand.  Done.  No glue needed, simple, free! feather display.  This got me thinking about summer nature walks.  We often collect the random crow feathers and an occasional blue jay beauty…but I’m not thrilled to have bird feathers hidden in toy boxes or on my kitchen counter.   This could be a fun collection display that keeps clean little hands clean!

Ok, then I took it a step further.  This has a great natural look, could I funk things up a bit?  Add some color?  Make more of a “craft” out of it?  I pulled out some felt and started cutting out my own feather shapes.  Maxie joined in on this part, too.  You really can’t go wrong with feather shapes – chalk any mistakes up to the fact that they look more natural!  To add a little more visual dimension, I embellished feather lines with a thin Sharpie.  (After it was completed I thought of adding a few stitches of embroidery floss for detail – that could be delicious too!)

I layered two feathers to add some thickness and to disguise the stick in the middle.  With a thin strip of hot glue down the middle, place a wooden skewer on the glue.  Place another thin strip of glue on top of the skewer and then put the top feather layer to cover the skewer.  I wanted to cover the bottom of the skewer too so I used some washi tape in lieu of floral tape to wrap the bottom of the feather into the skewer.  It helped to secure things and gave it more of a feather shape as well.  Then I went out to my trusty backyard jungle to find another stick and repeated the drilling process.  (Start with a drill bit much smaller then the feather stems, it’s easier to enlarge if you need to, rather then decreasing the hole width.)  After completion, the silver washi tape lost its excitement (just looked like duct tape), and I recovered it with hot pink tape instead.  Everything is always a little better with hot pink!

The pheasant feather display currently lives on my mantle (which usually changes weekly, we’ll see where it ends up next week), and the felt feather display lives happily on Maxie’s bedroom windowsill.  Her bedroom walls are a similar powder blue so it’s a perfect addition (and I love how the double felt layers look when backlit by the window).  There are still a few lonely pheasant feathers left in the brown paper bag.  I think those will be stashed away for some rainy-day-craft-project that just screams “I need feathers!”