Making a Leather Feather

 The first time I learnt to make a leather feather like this, was in a class I attended - the master, Jim Linnell, was the instructor.
It was 2013 and I was fortunate enough to get the feather Jim made during the class - picture above.

These feathers were not cut free from the leather, but remained as a 3D "tooling".

The videos I am going to show here, shows you how to make a feather that is cut loose from the leather.

To start, I use a 2/3oz vegtan leather, a swivel knife, a hair-blade tool, a wide fine-textured beveler, a very sharp Exacto blade (or you can use a fresh scalpel blade).

After cutting it free from the leather, the only steps that remain, is to thin down the ridges that will be on the back, sculpt it a little and then turn them into whatever color you desire.

There are so many variations you can play with when making these feathers:  the color, the shape, the size, realistic or not.

In the following photo, on the right, are the two feathers I did in the video.  I painted the middle one with a silver acrylic.

In this one, I did not cut free the top of the feather, but tooled the piece that the leather is still attached to, to look like a separate piece of leather.

You can see Jim Linnell's feather class at:
Tandy's Facebook Videos

And his feather patterns are free at:
Elktrack Studio

Have Fun!!