Birds of a Feather Art Projects

We have a collection of interesting feathers from visits to the local animal farm, but also bags of colorful purchased feathers from Michael’s that are fun for projects. For this one, I painted a simple bird shape into corrugated cardboard. I didn’t have a awl handy, so I used a corn cob holder to poke holes in the cardboard for Gracie to stick feathers in. You’ll want to make the holes at an angle, so the feathers will lay flatter to the body than sticking straight up. Grace, 5, did the selecting and poking, building a three-dimensional bird. I think we added a googly eye later, because we put those on everything!

Closer to Thanksgiving, I showed them a picture of what a turkey’s face looked like up close, and both markered a version in the middle of construction paper. They used glue sticks to add colorful feathers to this art as well.

One other favorite project was made with an egg carton. To make the owl, cut a section of the egg cradle part of an egg carton and glue it to the inside half of the flatter top. As you can see, we painted the beak, and darker eye sockets, and added googly eyes. Then we glued in natural feathers, and added pipe cleaner legs. Whooo loves projects with feathers?1