I knew I would do it... eventually... Part 1

So I've been telling myself that I'll make my own ostrich feather fans, to this end I have had a pound of ostrich feathers and 50 plastic staves in my backroom for... a long time.  The box is very unwieldy and it takes up alot of space.

I'd been telling myself I needed to borrow someone else's fan before I go at this project bull at a gate as I didn't want to damage the feathers, after all I only have a pound of them.  I've been telling myself this for months and yesterday I thought 'what the hell there is a 'how to...' for just about everything on YouTube let's give it a go' and I found the video below from Frou Frou Feathers.

I thought, well, that doesn't seem so hard so I went home, dragged out my feathers and my toolbox and set to work.

My initial plan was to overlay peacock feathers on the ostrich feathers, this didn't go so well.  Peacock eyes are tail feathers, so they're straight.  My ostrich feathers are wing plumes so they're curved.  I'm sure you see the problem that emerged, the peacock eyes stuck out all all kind of odd angles, not good.  So I scrapped that plan and I'm now planning on overlaying the eyes on the base of the fan later with araldite.  Hopefully that is slightly more successful.

So now we move on to the spectacular mess of blue feathers my loungeroom/kitchen has become.  I did vacuum up the majority of the feathers, I also spent a fair chunk of time chasing my dog (who seemed to think as always that this project was entirely for her benefit) around the loungeroom as she stole feathers, staves, wire, scissors and anything else she clamp her teeth around!  However, finally I have 12 completed staves, one whole fan... in bits...

12 feathered fan staves, now to bind them together

Next step off to Bunnings for bolts and washers!