Giant Cardboard Feathers

I love using cardboard for creating because it is a FREE canvas that is readily available.

We have used cardboard for many past projects including our Funky Chickens, Monochromatic Collage, and our Upcycled Owls. There are many more so just take a look under my Recycled Art page and you can find a lot of inspiration with recycled materials.

We recently got some new patio furniture that came delivered in some large cardboard boxes. We made a giant fort out of some of them and then I saved the other large pieces for later. I pulled them back out last week to make some Giant Feathers, a perfect craft with Thanksgiving around the corner.

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Here are the supplies we used to make our Giant Feathers:

Sturdy Cardboard
Drawing tool
Scissors
Utility knife
Paint
Brushes
Embellishments such as buttons, Pom poms, stickers, and jewels.
Glue

See below for the steps:

Step 1-

First, I sketched out a large feather shape onto my cardboard pieces…these kind of also look like leaves but we are calling them feathers!

Step 2-

*Adult help or supervision* My girls are young so I did this step for them. I used a utility knife and scissors to cut out the feather shapes.

Step 3-

I mixed our paint with a little white to make them more opaque and show up on the brown cardboard.

Step 4-

Painting the feathers. Lila, 6, was very particular about her designs and colors. Willa, 3.5, had some fun color mixing and gross motor painting with big strokes. Two totally different methods but both equally beautiful!

Step 5:

We let our feathers dry before moving on to the next step. I gathered a variety of embellishments for my girls to add to their feathers.

We drew a line down the middle of our feather with a black oil pastel for the shaft and then they started attaching their stickers and embellishments.