Friday, March 13, 2015

Saint Patrick's Day Mini Wings

I've already posted an easy step by step tutorial on how to make similar wire framed fairy wings, and you can find more detailed instructions in that post. I was just feeling rather festive, and decided to make a little pair of green and gold wings, and I thought I'd share a few pictures, enjoy.   
Instead of using four wire hangers, one for each wing like I did on my previous pair of wings, I formed these wings out of two hangers.
I was aiming for a swallowtail butterfly-ish shape, but I wasn't quite happy with it so I tried to add a bit of a scalloped edge, which helped.
Because the wings are quite small, I ended up using just one pair of knee high stockings, cutting them in half and knotting the ends to cover my wings.
I was a bit...overzealous with the incense stick while melting holes in my wings, which caused a few runs in the stockings. As a result, it looks like my wings have some sort of horrible flesh eating parasite eating away at them. Oops.
Since most paints don't show up particularly well on dark backgrounds, I painted my design in white first, so that the colors I painted in top would be more vivid.
Yikes, that yellow, a bit too vivid. Oh well.
I wish my camera phone could better capture the true sparklyness.
Then I added a bit of glitter....well..actually, quite a lot of glitter, theres no such thing as too much glitter, right?
I bent the remaining wire, from what used to be the hook of the hanger, into a U shape to create the frame. In hindsight I should have used some extra wire to make the frame a bit larger. The small frame does stay tucked into the back of a tightly fitted bodice, but it doesn't feel nearly as secure as a larger frame.
Here are the two sets of wings together for size comparison. As you can see the wings made from just two hangers are quite dinky compared to the full sized set. Still, I think they're rather cute.     

Amethyst Fairy Ensemble