Painted Feathers

This is something I made for some friends and family members, or, I should say, something I embellished.

As I’ve mentioned before, after my dad died I started finding feathers everywhere. I found them pretty often and started to collect and save them.  Now I have them in jars and vases around the apartment and mixed in with pens and brushes on my craft desk.

When I saw a picture on Pinterest of painted feathers, I thought it would be a good way to use some of them. I clicked on the link and found this post by Julia at the Free People blog. I was inspired to try painting feathers and adding a little loop to each one so it can be hung up.

First I picked out a nice selection of feathers and gave them a bath in warm, sudsy water.  After a good rinse, I let them dry on paper towels.

They look a bit ruffled, but once they were dry, I could smooth the barbs back in place with my fingers. I used a combination of watercolors, and Caran d’Arch Neocolor water soluble artists crayons and after the paint dried, I added more details with white gel pen, black, silver and sparkly-clear markers.

Most of my feathers were black, so I needed saturated colors to show up.   I used waxed linen thread with a few beads to make a loop on each painted feather.

It was really a pleasure working on each small feather, adding some color and pattern and then finishing it with the waxed linen thread hanging loop.  I’m very pleased with how they turned out and also glad to be sharing these small items that seemed to turn up for no reason, when I wasn’t even looking for them.

I’m not finding feathers nearly as often as I did for awhile, but I still do occasionally.  By the way, I’m just noticing that this shows as 1 hour later on WordPress than it is on my computer. This really is my last post of 2014!

Thanks for stopping by.