Tuesday’s Tip! – Colouring Feathers

I need to get more organised in sharing things with all you lovelies out there. I take lots (and i mean lots!!) of photos throughout my working day, yet I never seem to find the time to add the photos to posts with a bit of information.

I’m hoping 2017 is going to be the start of a more active/sharing new year for me and I will make a conscious effort to get more behind the scenes things shared 🙂 You never know you may even find some of them interesting or helpful!

I’ve decided to make Tuesdays a day for tips! So this week (and the first for 2017) my tip is as follows:

If you make things with feathers, I would recommend having a stock of white feathers, even if you don’t tend to use white feathers they are always handy to have! This is because you can colour them if you need to!

I recently had an order for a frame with a yellow glittery background and whilst i normally add only white feathers to any of my feather frames, this customer specifically requested yellow feathers.

So rather than buying (or trying to track down) a batch of yellow feathers just for a single frame, I created some using my white feathers.

Unlike ribbon or material where you can use alcohol markers to alter the colour, you can’t use these on feathers as it will make them too ‘wet’ and the fluffy parts of the feather would stick together leaving your feathers looking very sorry for themselves. But you can use distress inks!

I happened to have squeezed lemonade distress ink from Ranger and it was perfect for colouring my feathers.

Take a blending tool or piece of blending foam, apply ink to the tool/foam, gently pat it onto the feather, slowly building it up until you get the colour you require. If need be, let it dry in between layers, as if you use to much in one go you will make the feathers wet and the fluffy bits will clump. Don’t forget to colour both sides if using them loose inside something.

You can see in the photo above how the feathers started and how they finished. The finished feathers are a beautiful soft yellow colour and still lovely and fluffy!

The photo below doesn’t show off how yellow they are as the background is so vibrant, but they were and the customer loved her yellow feathers in her frame.

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