Paper Mâché Owl Part 9 - Adding the Feathers.

I am sorry I am late getting the blog post up today.  It has been a very busy week.  Spring is here, and I have been spring cleaning.  This year my husband and I have started clearing out the attic.  We have kept so much over the years that we no longer use.  We have been very busy getting it sorted and taken to donate or trash.  It has kept me from doing as much work on the owl as I would have liked.

I have started adding the feathers.  In this case the feathers are made out of cardboard.  I drew a rough feather shape for the bottom of the feather, but left the tops squared off.  The feathers are laid down individually using hot glue to keep them in place.  

The feathers are different sizes and shapes depending where they are on the bird.  I started with the legs and tail and have been working my way up.  The small feathers on the legs were difficult because they were so small they were hard to handle.  I have some silicon finger protectors that really helped save the day.  They kept me from burning my fingertips.  However, the trade off was that the tiny pieces were hard to place.  

After the legs, I started on the tail.   I have been working my way up from there to the rest of the body.  I am actually a little further ahead than these pictures show, but I have not had time to take any more new pictures yet.  Next week I should be pretty close to completing this portion of the project.

I guess readers are wondering at this point if I am every going to put any paper mâché on this bird.  That will come after I finish painting the eyes made and the feathers all in place.  

Some paper mâché projects are just building up layers of paper.  An example of this would be putting layers of paper  mâché over a cardboard box to make a stiff box.  An example of this would be an early project of mine for a pumpkin jack in the box.  Hopefully my painting skills have improved since then.

Painted box that was made by covering the box with layers of paper mâché. 

Some projects are building up layers of paper mâché over a mold and then removing the layers from the mold.  An example of this would be my pumpkin series or the goblin heads.  After the project is completely covered with multiple layers, a sharp craft knife is used to cut the item off of its mold and then more layers of paper mâché are used to cover over the cut edges and form a three dimensional project.

Pumpkin removed from the mold.  I also made the mold for this pumpkin.

This owl project is a different type of project.  First I completely hand made the armature for the bird and it is an integral part of the project.  It will remain inside the bird to from and maintain the structure.  This project has been more about creating a sculpture; with the paper mâché being the glue that will be the final coat that will keep everything together.  

Armature for the owl.

You can view my other projects by scrolling back to see earlier posts or by going to folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com    .