In this DIY tutorial, I'll show you how to easily and quickly stencil feathers in a variety of patterns using just a few materials that you can easily obtain!
You'll need feathers, Rub N Buff gold paint (or another paint in whatever color you like), a stiff brush for stenciling, and paper for making stencils.
I decided to repurpose some ho-hum feathers from a pair of earrings I bought for next to nothing, but you could also use regular feathers from a craft store. I liked these because they already have caps on the end, which makes it easier to turn them into jewelry again. You could also buy crimp caps and add the end yourself after they're painted.
Take your piece of paper, fold it in half if you're making a symmetrical pattern, and cut out a shape. Here, I cut out a line at a slant to make a chevron stripe.
Place your stencil over your feather.
I lined up the point in the middle of the stencil with the line going down the feather to make sure that it was centered.
Now it's time to paint! I put a piece of paper under the feather to keep the paint that might go through the individual plumes from staining my work surface. Wax paper works great for this as well. Then I squeezed out a little paint onto the paper, dipped the brush into it, and then stippled it (a hard up and down motion, like you're hitting the brush against the paint) on a different area to get off the excess paint. You don't want too much paint on the brush or it will seep under your stencil.
Then I stippled over my stencil with the brush, making sure I got nice even coverage of the uncovered area. If you need more paint, just reload your brush like you did initially. Make sure you hold your stencil down nice and flat and taut over the feather. This keeps the paint from going under the edges of the stencil.
Carefully remove your stencil and you should have a stripe that looks like this!
You can cut lots of different stencils to get different results. Here are a few that I did.
You can see the accompanying stencils I made for each feather here. From top to bottom: the chevron one already shown, a nice thick line (I painted this three times: two times to form an "x", and a final time down at the bottom with the stencil spilling over the edge), polka dots, and an argyle stripe.
For the polka dots, I used a hole punch to cut out circles in a random pattern. Then I just stenciled over each hole.
Here I reused the chevron stripe to make it a double.
A triple stripe looks nice as well!
I think this stencil was my favorite. First, I cut out a diamond shape, and stenciled this in the middle. Then, I cut out an "X", centered the stencil over the diamond (let it dry first), and carefully stippled it. The "X" had a lot of edges to hold down, so I went slowly and carefully to make sure it didn't bleed under the edges at all.
I think next I might try thin stripes stenciled into a gingham or plaid pattern, stars, triangles, or a combination of polka dots and stripes.
Let the feathers dry thoroughly, and then turn them into whatever kind of jewelry you like! Make matching (or even non-matching) ones for a pair of earrings, turn one into a pendant, or use different sizes for a string of feathers along a length of chain. You could put the biggest as the center pendant, with gradually-smaller ones on each side going back towards the clasp. You could also attach them to string or leather and then braid them into your hair for a Bohemian look! These would be great for making DIY Christmas presents as well.
