Do feather art!

Feathers, with their beautiful forms, sheens, colors and other properties call out the creative spirit. These gifts from the birds can be arranged, sculpted with, painted on, and woven to make things like dreamcatchers, elaborate costumes and headdresses, feather art like the intricate paintings done on the blank soft medium of swan feathers, and silhouettes adorned with these fine elements of nature. And what better items to wear than the strung marabou and white feather boas available from ContinentalFeathers.com while you're creating your feathery masterpieces? They can only serve to inspire!

Kids love to do fun things with feathers too! Whether you set them outside in the summer sun to attach colored feathers to their flip flops with white craft glue or hand them a box of jewels, feathers, ribbons and images to decorate the cover of a journal, you'll be pleased to see them immersing themselves in the creative pursuit that's unique to feather art. Many colors, large and small, are carried by feather suppliers for kids to use in their projects, which is great. Nothing like attractive and pleasant elements to make art projects the best way to spend the afternoon.

Speaking of artists, feathers have been featured in art, the way all natural elements seem to make their way into paintings and sculptures and engravings, for centuries. In fact, in the late 1600s, Dutch artist Melchior d'Hondecoeter painted "A Pelican and Other Birds Near a Pool" which was soon after renamed "The Floating Feather." Suppliers of fine art and art prints are familiar with this painting which features one single small white feather in the foreground behind which are arranged a pelican, duck, grebe, goose, cassowary, and flamingos, and other bird species. Perhaps one of these is an ancestor to the birds plucked for the white feather boas that accentuate beauty and charm the world over today.