Tag: feathers

Nature Dreamcatcher

As part of our #30dayswild activities from The Wildlife Trusts, we decided to follow one of their instructions that you can find here.

Making a your dreamcatcher is simple and fun. It’s also a great opportunity to get outdoors and explore nature. Go for a walk and collect natural materials to make your dreamcatcher with.

What you will need:

Three sturdy sticks
Garden twine
Natural materials to decorate – hag stones (stones with holes in), feathers, shells, leaves, flowers, grasses etc
Scissors

How to make your nature dream catcher:

  1. Arrange your sticks in a triangle and tie together with twine. Leave one with a long tail to hang.
  2. Create a pattern of your choice in the triangle with twine. It can be a simple or as complicated as you like.
  3. Once you’re happy with your twine, start decorating! You could also suspend some of your materials from pieces of twine from the bottom.
  4. Think about adding flowers for colour and herbs for fragrance.
  5. Hang your dreamcatcher and change out the fresh materials when they wilt.

Paper Feathers

These feathers are very simple to make but look really beautiful. We’ve used plain paper but there’s no reason you couldn’t use patterned paper or decorate the feathers before you start cutting.

You will need:

  • Paper, we used off cuts from other projects
  • Pencil
  • Scissors
  • Pointy object like a knitting needle
  • Template

Step 1.

Cut out a feather template (or draw your own) and draw around it on the back of your paper. When you come to do the middle of the feather press REALLY hard with your pencil so it leaves an indentation on your paper!

Step 2.

Use the knitting needle or similar pointed object to go over the middle of the feather, you’re aiming to make an indentation in the paper that will show on the right side.

Step 3.

Cut out the feather. Carefully fold along the indented line (the central part of the feather) to give it a bit of shape.

Step 4.

Now for the fiddly bit! Carefully cut all along each side of the feather being sure not to cut through the central part of the feather. Use the template with the dotted lines as a guide. Take your time doing this, you want the cuts to be quite close together but be careful not to cut off the strands.

Step 5.

Have fun and don’t forget to show us how you get on!