I've been making some balsa bodies bass/pike topwaters this winter. I've posted some of them here.
A couple of days ago I had an idea.
I do feather inlays all the time on rod blanks/reel seats/rod tubes....
Why not try using feather inlays to 'color' a popper body?
The technique still needs some fine tuning, but all of these will fish, and they look kind of cool. Plus, it's not hard to do. (I know the fish certainly don't care, but I like them prettty most times.)