Paper Feather Earrings

I haven’t pulled out my Silhouette in a while. It doesn’t help that it is in a box buried under pads of paper and sheets of felt (I really need to organize my craft room… yikes). But a while ago someone gave me a pretty leather feather keychain. It is small and adorable, and I thought they would be perfect little earrings. But alas, I can’t cut leather. But I can cut paper!

So that’s what I did.

To begin, download this feather bundle. I used the large and medium-sized feathers. Since I wanted the two feathers to be different colors, I had to cut the large ones first and then the medium ones second on a different color of paper.

Add the feather bundle to a new project,  group it’s pieces together (when you ungroup, for some reason the feathers are in pieces, too) and delete the rest the medium and small ones. Make it as large as you want, my entire feather was about 5”, which ended up being about  3 1/2 inches long when I trimmed off the stem. I also grabbed the side and made the feather a bit wider.

 

 

Next, you want to add a hole so you can add your feather to a chain later. Click the circle tool and add a small circle at the bottom of the feather.

 

Next, click and drag a box around the feather and group the circle and feather together.

 

 

 

Now, you need to copy and paste three times so you have four feathers. Since you will be gluing the feathers back-to-back, you need to flip two of your feathers horizontally so they will match up.

 

 

Now you are ready to cut! I cut on the Patterned Paper setting, but turned the speed way down to 3. Because these feather are small and delicate, they come out much better if you slow your machine down.

After your large feathers are cut, bring up your feather file again and add it to your existing project.  Delete all of them except the medium one. Position it over your first large one and adjust it until it is the size you would like.

 

 

Then, delete the large ones, and repeat the circle and copy/paste instructions. Remember to flip two feathers horizontally so they will match up when you glue them.

Once you have your feathers cut, you can glue them back to back. Match up the ones that go together and glue them with a glue stick.

 

After mine were glued, I trimmed off the stem and a couple of the more fragile, wispy pieces near the end.

 

 

Once everything is dry, you can put your earrings together. Start with a chain. Mine was 11 links long. No matter what length you choose, make sure your chain has an odd number of links.

 

 

Take a jump ring and attach it on the middle ring. The two sides of the chain will hang down.

 

 

Attach your jump rings to the ends of the chain (3 jump rings total). Attach the earring to the middle jump ring, and attach the large feather to one end of the chain, and the medium feather to the other end.

Just like that!

 

These earrings are so fun for summer!