The Pheasant

How do you recycle a stuffed pheasant?

My bestie’s dad, Bob, was a magnificent shot with a shotgun despite only having one arm. I shot many a clay bird with him as a teenager, and it never failed to amaze me that he never missed.

Through happenstance this past fall, I ended up with a stuffed pheasant that was a trophy of one of his hunts. I had it in the studio, and had seriously considered painting it glittery pink and hanging jewelry off of it. As morbid as it may sound, I promise it would’ve looked really cool.

As a matter of chance, a friend closed her boutique a few weeks ago and I bought all of her mannequins, and when I went over to settle up, I ended up getting some other stuff from her. Felt hats are kinda rage-y right now, and I got two Crazy Train hats from her…one is this amazing minty green color, but she had taken it to a show, and a customer had spilled a drink on it, which stained the rear part of the brim with droplet marks. Droplet stains or no, it was still pretty fabulous, so I took them both.

I packed both hats along this week to take to the show in Tulsa.

I also packed the pheasant. I thought it would look pretty cool in our setup, and heck, it might sell. Ya never know. When we were putting it in the back of Mom ‘s car, the tail broke loose. It was hangin’ on, but definitely not still firmly attached. I said “We’ll glue it back on when we get to Tulsa.” Bob would have been proud, as he was big on fixing things with glue.

At the Tulsa fairgrounds the next day, we were unpacking and setting up, and I decided I would use some of my funky earring fabric to jazz up the hats. I stowed them to the side in a clothes basket to go back to the car so we could bring them home with us that evening to work them over.

Later, I unpacked the pheasant, its tail hanging by a quill, not lookin’ right. I gasped. Mom looked at me…”What???”

“We need to use this pheasant to fix up this hat like the one Lloyd Christmas wore in Dumb & Dumber.”

Mom, laughing: “Oh my gosh! Perfect!”

So I drug it all back to where we are staying during the show and got up super early Friday morning to work on the hat. The feathers came off of the pheasant in large groupings, which worked perfectly for the project. Here’s what I came up with.

Pretty fabulous, eh?

I sold it yesterday to another vendor, and we have a deal in the works where she is going to send me a bunch of hats on which I will work my magic, so if you see gals in bikinis and amazing feathered straw hats all over the Lake of the Ozarks next summer, know that Junkyard Farmgirl is responsible for it all.

You just never know when the stars are going to line up and give you the inspiration that will end up being a creating gig, so don’t ever be afraid to think outside the box and do something a little crazy!

If you’re at Lake of the Ozarks, check out my friend Brenda’s shop, Shabby Chic Boutique, at the Landing on Main Street, or shop her Facebook page, Shabby Chic Boutique!

Love that floppy felt hat look? Check out this affiliate link for hats, and look below for feathers to jazz it up: http://<script type=”text/javascript”> amzn_assoc_tracking_id = “junkyardfarmg-20”; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = “manual”; amzn_assoc_ad_type = “smart”; amzn_assoc_marketplace = “amazon”; amzn_assoc_region = “US”; amzn_assoc_design = “enhanced_links”; amzn_assoc_asins = “B077SR4BPZ”; amzn_assoc_placement = “adunit”; amzn_assoc_linkid = “fcd20f9d8a69b828afaeef6e0eabbf45”; </script> <script src=”//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US”></script>

Feather affiliate link: http://<script type=”text/javascript”> amzn_assoc_tracking_id = “junkyardfarmg-20”; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = “manual”; amzn_assoc_ad_type = “smart”; amzn_assoc_marketplace = “amazon”; amzn_assoc_region = “US”; amzn_assoc_design = “enhanced_links”; amzn_assoc_asins = “B07JNBZ3ZW”; amzn_assoc_placement = “adunit”; amzn_assoc_linkid = “3e6d57b7fd59a1e0cebc4194b12f3278”; </script> <script src=”//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US”></script>