Smartsy and Artsy: July 2012

The peacock theme is coming together nicely! I just love the colors and I love how each one is unique.

I made a veil (you can see it later) with peacock feather accents, and I wanted the bridesmaids to have little fascinators as well.

Here is my inspiration, an etsy store that sells them if you don't want to go to the trouble to make them yourself: (Click on the picture to go to the store)

But since I did not want to pay $20 to $40 a piece for them, I made my own!!! I bought peacock feathers on eBay from this seller : http://stores.ebay.com/naturesfeathers

They were $20 for 50 feathers. I am going to use them in the bouquets too, so it was worth it. The "stems" are not really long, but they are perfect for what I need. You can get them cheaper if you order them from China or Hong Kong, but I wanted to get started right away, and did not want to wait for the shipping. And boy, was Nature's feathers fast! I ordered the feathers LATE on a Friday night, and they came on Monday! I started crafting immediately. I made something for the flower girl, which I will post later.

Today, I got around to doing the bridesmaid fascinators. All six of them done, three months before the wedding! I am feeling pretty good about where I stand, so that I will not be rushing. I know that sounds niave even as I type it.

First, start with a felt triangle:

Next, trim the peacock feathers. I just eyeballed it, and found a peacock feather with a large eye and one that was a little smaller. Make sure you have sharp scissors and a steady hand. This is like giving a feather a hair-cut.

Here it is all trimmed up:

Next, you need the "sword" feathers. I did not have them, so I went to JoAnn and bought these in the floral department. These are $5 a piece (but I had some kind of coupon, I can't remember how much I saved) and come with the sword feathers, some peacock feathers, and some little turquoise feathers. I DID NOT use the peacock feathers from this floral thingy because they are much smaller than the ones I bought. But they will be fine in the bridesmaid bouquets. I needed 3 of these because they had two "sword" feathers each. (the one picured has only one because I had already cut the other one off.

I used one "sword" feather and two skinny turquoise feathers for each fascinator. I arranged them on the triangle. The best way to do this is to hold the feather and triangle up to your head and make sure that it is not sticking way way out and then hold it in place, bring it down to the table, and glue it.

Next, I placed the peacock feathers down to get the arrangement just right. After that, I squeezed out a pretty good amount of hot glue. I gently placed the feather down and patted it into the hot glue. I used this technique so the feather would not become separated while it is being worn.

Glue both feathers down, and..... voila!

Some of the sword feathers curve to the left and others curl to the right. All of my bridesmaids will be wearing them on the right, so I just made sure that no matter which way the sword was swooping, the fascinator looked right when I held it up to my head.