Tutorial Simple Clay Feathers

Hello :)

Today I want to show you how you can make very simple feathers for spring or summer. You can use them as decoration and hang them on branches or as gift tags or whatever you can imagine :)

Materials:

air-dry or polymer clay
roller
x-acto knife or blade
tooth pick
small bottle


Instructions:

Tutorial Simple Clay Feathers

First roll out some clay very thinly and sketch out the shape of your feather. Feathers come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, you can check out some pictures on the internet or use a real one as a guide. Basically, it's a sort of leaf shape.




Cut it out and smooth down the edges to make them thinner.





Now use a blade to texture your feather. First make a line from one corner to the other which serves as a guide. Then make small lines very close to each other and in a sort of diagonal way. Make them on both sides of your first line.




Then roll out a very thin snake of clay, make sure that it's thinner on one side.




Place your thin snake of clay in the middle of your feather, where you had made your first line and cut of the end. With a tooth pick make a hole into the end of the 'stem' to hang it later  and then place the feather onto a small bottle for drying or baking.




And that's it! Really simple but pretty :)
You can also paint them in several colours to give them a bohemian look for summer.
I'll show you how to do that in summer time :)

If you want, you can simply string them or wrap some colourful yarn or cord around it.
Here is how I did it:

Tutorial Simple Clay Feathers

I used some cotton yarn which I dyed brown with tea as I only had this whitish colour at hand. I just put some water in a pan, added a strong black tea and put the yarn in. I let it boil for a couple of minutes and then turned off the heat and just left it in there for 2 hours or so with the lid closed. I rinsed and dried it and that's it.


To attach the yarn to your feather, thread it through the hole, leaving a bit of excess (more than on the picture, to make it easier to tie)




Wrap the long end around your feather a few times.



Take a needle (or a pieces of folded wire like I did) and thread your long end of the yarn into it. Poke it through the last wrap on your feather and pull tight.


Here it is pulled through. This secures your wrappings.
Tie two knots with your short ends.
Now you have it secured.



To make a loop to hang it, you need to tie it again. For this, take the two ends in one hand and fold the loop. Take the loop into the other hand and tie a knot with the ends and the loop. Tie another one to secure it.
Use a bit of super glue on the wrappings and knots to secure everything permanently and that's it. You can hang them now :)

Tutorial Simple Clay Feathers

And what can you do with them?
I strung them onto some more yarn together with some daisies from clay and some wooden beads and hung them on hooks from the ceiling :) Or you can hang them on nice branches if you like :)
By the way, I'm gonna show you how you can make those flowers soon :)

Tutorial Simple Clay Feathers

So do you like these feathers? Are you gonna make them, too? And what would you use them for? Let me know :)

See you soon