Top Ten Things To Do With Feathers

If you're like me, it's a constant struggle to keep all of your parrot's feathers cleaned up. They seem to be everywhere! So at some point you probably had the wonderful idea that you should start keeping all those feathers. After all, they're beautiful and surely you'll use them for something! Right?

It seemed like a good idea at the time. That is until you tried to think of things to do with them. If you're like me, that's when you discovered that there's not a lot you can do with molted feathers. Well, it's time to break out that bag of feathers that you have tucked away and do something creative! Here are the top ten ideas that I discovered to do with all those feathers that I saved. Check them out and let me know if you can you think of more.

1. Feather Bookmark - This is a simple idea and requires no craft skills. You can either use a feather as-is or laminate one in plastic. Either way you have a simple, unique and original bookmark.
   
2. Feather Keychain Charm - Creating a small keychain charm is very easy. All it takes is a small piece of leather (or yarn), a couple small feathers, a bead and a bit of glue. While the one shown in the picture below is very simple, you can make them much more complicated if you have the time and creative energy by adding more levels and layers. The image below is a Keychain Charm created using Kibibi's feathers.
   
3. Harry Potter Style Quill Pen - This is a great project for kids to participate in that are learning to write. Create a quill pen and give the kids a chance to practice their penmanship. And don't worry about the ink causing a mess because you can use food dyes or kid safe paints instead of ink. Here's a great article on the process of creating a professional grade Quill Pen. This article goes into great detail about how to create the quill pen but you don't need to follow all the steps to create a functional pen.
4. Feather Ear Ring(s) - This is very similar to the keychain charm above but it requires a earring loop. You can create a simple one as shown below or get as creative as you want. The image below is an earring created using Kibibi's feathers.
   
5. Feather Costume Arrow - This is a fun project especially for the Boy Scout or Girl Scout in the family. Here's an excellent tutorial by Penwriter that you can follow to create a Costume Arrow.
   
6. Angel Feather Gift Poem - Here's a cool idea that I found at CraftBits. It's a Angel Feather Gift Poem and it's a great idea for a gift for family and friends. The article also includes a great idea for a Christmas ornament. Check it out by clicking on the image below.
   
7. Donate to the Feather Distribution Project - The Feather Distribution Project collects molted feathers and donates them to the Pueblo Indians for use in traditional religious ceremonies. This is a controversial project in the mind of some people. For example, are the Pueblo Indians using them to make crafts for profits or using them in their ceremonies? This is not an issue according to Jonathan E. Reyman, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Illinois State Museum and founder of The Feather Distribution Project. According to Dr. Reyman, "... any Pueblo or Native American Church member who is found to have sold feathers received from the Project is immediately removed from the list of those to whom feathers are given." Another issue that concerns some people is the possibility of spreading disease via the mail system when mailing feathers to the Feather Distribution Project. While this may be a minor concern, the potential spread of disease is eliminated once the feathers are received at the Feather Distribution Project. Also according to Dr. Reyman, "... all feathers arriving at the Illinois State Museum are processed via a freezing-thawing procedure to ensure that disease, if present, is not spread." The picture below shows a 2006 Zuni Pueblo Harvest Dance using a lot of macaw feathers provided by the Feather Distribution Project.
   

   Photograph by Troydon Chavez, Used with permission.
   Provided by Jonathan E. Reyman, Ph.D. Curator of Anthropology Illinois State Museum Research and Collections Center

8. Dreamcatcher - This one is going to require some crafting skills but I'm sure you can handle it. In fact here are two links, one to a tutorial for a Dreamcatcher for Adults that will make an authentic dreamcatcher and one link to a Dreamcatcher for Kids that's very simple and based on paper plates. Both are fun projects to complete and result in a wonderful dreamcatcher that you can display with pride. The image below is a dreamcatcher created using Kibibi's feathers.
   
9. Painting With Feathers - Here's one for the kids. Everyone knows how much fun finger-painting can be. So why not do some feather-painting. Using a feather to paint creates some very interesting paint strokes and can be a lot of fun. Of course you can use any type of paint you want but using kid safe paint or even food coloring and water is recommended. Just set them down, give them an assortment of feathers and paint colors and watch their creative wheels turn.
10. Painting on Feathers - While painting WITH feathers doesn't require talent, painting ON feathers does. You can check out some awesome feather paintings at the Featherlady Studio but I must warn you that instead of creating something, you'll be buying something because this artwork is amazing. If her work inspires you then you'll want to check out this How To Paint Feathers with Acrylics tutorial at the Expert Village.
    

I hope you find these ideas useful and hopefully they'll ignite your creative side to come up with more ideas. Let me know if you come up with any other great ideas.

One final parting recommendation would be to clean the feathers before using them. In some of these projects, it will be much more difficult to clean them after you complete your project. Cleaning feathers probably isn't something any of us do on a regular basis so here's a few links to explore. The first link, How to Clean Feathers and Feather-Covered Objects at Associated Content gives several dry cleaning methods for cleaning feathers. The second link, How to Clean Feathers Used in Crafts at eHow gives a few additional methods for cleaning your feathers.

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This article was originally published on www.InfoSuperFlyway.com. The InfoSuperFlyway website is dedicated to Kibibi the talking African Grey Parrot (Congo African Grey) with sights, sounds, audio, videos, articles, top ten lists, parrot jokes, parrot humor, and Clicker training info! Original Article Source: Top Ten Things To Do With Feathers

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