The Glitter Feather Bouquet

Or, isn’t glitter gorgeous?

The Glitter Feather Bouquet

We don’t have a garden as such.  There are paddocks and a pine forest and gum trees and an old orchard that produces fruit that benefits no one as the Rosellas pick the fruit off the branches before they have a chance to ripen.  (The blossoms the orchard trees produce are lovely though).

I think it’s delightful that Sylvie shows no prejudice or snobbism about the blooms she picks to bring to me as a ‘bouquet for Mummy’.  In her eyes, there is no such thing as a weed.  To her, all flowers are beautiful.  She will often bring me a bouquet where a noble daffodil is nestled alongside ten or so Oxalis flowers (more commonly known as Sour sops).  I love all of her bouquets, we always put them in a vase on my desk for me to enjoy whilst I work.  Her only limitation is that I ask her to pick each bloom with a long enough stem…

One of the bouquets Sylvie made for me some time ago was from a collection of chicken’s feathers  (it was the end of summer and the chickens were moulting).  It was a beautiful gesture and one I couldn’t resist writing a post about. You might like to have a look at the post: 

"The feather bouquet, Or how a child can see the pretty in everything"

For absolutely no reason at all, except for the joy of playing about with glitter, Sylvie and I spent a happy half hour or so painting watered down PVA glue onto the ends of some feathers and shaking on glitters.  

We used a paint brush to apply the glue to the feathers.

Some of the feathers lined up drying.

'Fairy dust':  Make a wish!

Whilst the glue was drying, we took the residual glitter outside as ‘fairy dust’.  Sylvie wanted to make a wish as she threw the glitter into the air.  The recent rain had left small pools of water on the old tank stand; we spent ages looking at all the different patterns as the light refracted through the water and around the glitter.  Magical!

The 'Fairy dust' sparkling up the concrete on the old water tank stand.

When the feathers were dry, they were arranged to please my eye, (larger at the back, smaller to the front), bound with a rubber band and the bouquet finished with a large satin ribbon.  Another lovely afternoon bites the dust (fairy dust of course)!

A safety note:
Glitter can be dangerous.  Never get glitter in your eye, and never throw glitter over someone, especially near their eyes.  Sylvie received a huge lecture about shutting her eyes tightly while she threw the ‘fairy dust’ and made her wish.

I like the different combinations of colours and also textures, some powdery fine glitters and some with larger flakes.

The longest feather on the left hand side is one of our rooster Barry Lyndon's grand pennant-style tail feathers.