Creating crafts with feathers can be as complicated or as simple as you like, which makes these projects suitable for all ages and levels of experience.
Feathers are as beautiful as they are delicate and intricate. Whether you want to make crafts with pheasant feathers, turkey feathers, or peacock feathers, these stunning materials can help you embellish existing items or make fun and unique creations.
The craft projects you can do with feathers are endless. If you want to pep up your look, you can use different kinds of feathers to make all kinds of accessories, including headbands, earrings, and necklaces. If home decoration is more your style, simply create gorgeous feather wreaths and dreamcatchers (see below). Of course, there are also many crafts with feathers for preschoolers and older children: you can make any number of friendly, colorful critters with feathers and simple materials like popsicle sticks, google eyes, and pipe cleaners.
Many DIY crafts with feathers, especially projects targeted at younger craft fans, involve adhesives at some point.
When you select your adhesive make sure it can bond to the materials you are using. Loctite’s super glues are great options for many projects. For instance, if you are working with larger surfaces, Loctite Super Glue Brush-On is a good choice. It bonds many common porous and non-porous craft materials, such as leather, wood, ceramic, metal, and paper, and its built-in brush helps you apply an even coat of adhesive to textured surfaces. Even better, it comes in a spill-resistant bottle that lets you focus on your project. Loctite Extreme Glue is another all-rounder you can use for many materials.
These instructions focus on a simple design emphasizing the hanging feathers, but you can add as many beads, ribbons, and other materials to the hoop as you like.
- What you need. Wire/wooden hoop, shallow bowl, feathers, acrylic paint, water, cord ends, leather thread, string, beads, glue, and scissors.
- Dip-dye the feathers. Thoroughly mix equal parts of acrylic paint and water in a shallow bowl, dip the lower halves of the feathers into it, and string them up to dry. This keeps the paint from pooling and creates a lovely gradient effect.
- Wrap the leather thread around the hoop. Tie one very long piece of leather thread to the hoop at any point, and glue it in place for extra hold. Now pull the thread across the hoop and over the rim. Pull the thread taught to keep it in place, then guide it to the underside of the rim. Now pull the thread across the hoop again (it will cross the first section of thread near the center), and loop it around the hoop about half an inch to the side of your starting position. Using the same piece of thread, continue making loops in this manner until you have covered the entire hoop; it should resemble a bicycle wheel when you are done.
- Add beads and feathers. Once the feathers are dry, affix a cord end to each vane. Tie string around the cord end and add your beads. Tie the end of each string to the hoop. You can use super glue to reinforce the knots.
- Hang your dreamcatcher.
