Feathers can be boring, particularly if you buy them in bulk. As a rule, when you buy feathers in a package as opposed to a single feather purchase, the feathers you are getting are second-rate. However, feathers can be made amazing to use for crafts once you know the easy ways to spruce them up! Here’s how to decorate feathers for crafts, including the ones you find yourself in your own yard!
If you want to bleach your own feathers, you can find out how here: How to Bleach Feathers for Crafts. After bleaching them, you can ‘paint’ the feathers easily by using a Sharpie marker. I love gold and siler Sharpies, in both the thin and regular-tipped styles. Simply ‘painting’ the stem of the feather and allowing it to fade as the feather sprouts can make a so-so feather simply shine! Sharpies are great because they are permanent, don’t bleed on feathers, and are easier to use than painting the feathers outright. For black feathers in particular, the gold and silver Sharpies are amazing! You can fleck the tips of the feathers to make them look simply awesome! Try out a variety of Sharpie colors and tip styles to decorate your feathers with- simply stroke the feathers like you would if you were using a paintbrush on a newspaper surface.
For white or bleached feathers, I love using food coloring to dye them. Simply take a half cup of water, add food coloring until you get the color you want (I prefer very light colors so the feathers can look like watercolors) and either dunk the feather in the colored water for around 5 minutes, or use an eye dropper to apply flecks of colored water to your feathers. You can do as many colors as you want to dye your feathers with, and the food coloring works great in muted and darker colors, depending on how dark you want the colors to be. Don’t apply only food coloring to a feather, though – it will rub off on everything. Mix it with water. Be sure to work on a newspaper surface so you don’t stain things.
Glitter is amazing on darker feathers that you haven’t bleached. Simply apply glitter to your darker feathers by getting a small spray bottle, filling it halfway with glitter, then fill it up with hair spray. Shake the bottle liberally and then hold it 8 inches away from your feather, then squirt away! Allow to dry, then squirt again if you want more glitter. I love it! (works for your own hair, too, for a fun kick!)
Cutting and curling your feathers works to make them great for crafts as well. Shape your feathers into square or round shapes, or even heart shapes, and use a curling iron to curl them to give them cool dimension. Sometimes, all a feather needs is a hair cut, and you can have amazing feathers, no matter where you got them or how they looked before! You can use all these techniques, and come up with some of your own for decorating your feathers for crafts!
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How I decorate feathers I find for crafts