Repurposed Rainbow "Feather" Duster Cattails

We wanted to add some colourful, whimsical decorations to our makerspace's parade float.

Perusing the offerings at our local dollar store, we found some cheap plastic "feather" dusters that we decided to transform into colourful cattails. The best part is that they can be reused to dust the makerspace's out of reach spots after the parade!

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

To make these cattails we used:

• plastic rainbow "feather" dusters
• bamboo poles (the type usually used for gardening stakes)
• plastic bags and plastic tablecloth
• duct tape

The dusters had a loop on the end of their handles, so we cut that part off.

Next we drilled a hole the same size as our bamboo poles into the end of the handle.

The dusters were then stuck on the end of the poles.

For the parade, we added duct tape to make sure the dusters wouldn't fall off.

The cattail leaves were made by ironing sheets of plastic around bamboo poles.

We cut open several plastic bags and smoothed them flat.

Bamboo poles were sandwiched between the sheets of plastic and some spare green plastic tablecloh was added as a final layer.

The plastic was fused together with an iron (set on the lowest heat setting). Newsprint was used to protect the iron from the plastic.

When the sheets were fused together, we cut out the leaf shapes and then passed over them with the iron one last time.