As my kids apply get “into” Harry Potter (finally!!!), we have a slow but steady trickle of Harry Potter DIYs coming our way. We have previously shared our super popular Harry Potter Wands, made Owl Cupcakes and Owl Bookmarks and enjoyed some chocolate snitches at Christmas. Today we explore the old art of Feather Quill writing! DIY Feather Quills are surprisingly quick and easy to make.. and after some experimenting we came up with the simplest way of decorating them…
Feather Quills are made from the “flight feathers” of large birds – apparently geese or swans are best (we ad a beautiful Swan feather, we could have added more colours), but we made do with crow and pigeon feathers we could find on our walks in the park!
Harry Potter Feather Quills DIY – Materials:
- white and gold acrylic paint
- scissors
- ink
Harry Potter Feather Quills DIY :
As per usual, you can watch our quick and simple video to show you how we decorated our Feather Quills, or you can check the written instructions down below the video!
- Firstly we collected lots of lovely feathers on our walk. We picked our biggest and tidiest.
- Using a fine paint brush we carefully decorated our feathers with dots and lines – less is more!
- Once fully dry, you need to make two cuts – one diagonally across the bottom of the diy quill, the other “up” the centre of the quill nib.
- OPTIONAL: you can now make a third cut across – if you ant to flatten the nib for different quill writing effects!
And that was it! Making a feather quill really is that easy!! Hope you have lots of fun exploring this old tradition of writing and that you come back for some more Harry Potter DIYs! We love that it combines some time outdoors, finding the feathers, as well as time indoors, making our craft, as well as enjoying practicing writing with our DIY Feather Quills!
Cara says
Am going to try this. I spoke to some reenactors using quills for calligraphy. They used swan feathers and baked them in the oven (if I remembered the temperature that would be good) in sand to keep the heat even and stop them bending to make them strong. But I reckon your way is going to be what we try!
Becky says
Thanks for joining the #naturallycrafty linky at Simple Parenting Maggy with your fab quills
Catherine says
My eldest has just got into Harry Potter and this is perfect! Thanks so much for joining in with #naturallycrafty 🙂