Zarina Wings. Bail.

I started making Fairy Wings. And I got stuck. I pushed a little bit more, and got stuck again. I looked a YouTube and read tutorials about how some AMAZING wings were created. But, alas, mine still sat 1/2 done. Yesterday, after weeks of thinking and having them out and looking at them… I called “game” and went to Spirit Halloween store.

Surprise! When I walked in I was blown away by how clever some of the stuff in there was. It was so fun. There was a whole WALL of Fairy wings in the back of the store.

Wow. How fun! So I took notes, and left, and brought my daughter back to the store after school. I had these thoughts that I could make super big wings with a specific pattern in the wire. And at the end of the day, it was better to just buy them.

Let me offer a few “don’ts” so that you do not have to struggle. My goal was to make really big really realistic fairy wings. I wanted them to look just like the wings in the Tinkerbell movies.
I wanted to have a lot of control in the bendability of the wire so I used a thick gauge floral wire. That turned out to be flexible enough to bend, but not stiff enough to really hold the shape.

(Here in this picture is the wire I used, and a coat hanger as a contrast.)
Here are the wings in process. The curls that we made don’t actually provide extra stability. They do the opposite, the pull on the wings, adding weight and pending the tips out of shape.

I tried using glue to stick the fabric to the wire frames. First up was E6000. This can be messy, but it is strong and it’s the glue of choice for beading.  In this case, it was messy, and it did not really hold. It would smoosh into the wrong places, and was hard to aim and spread on the wire only. Next I tried a glue gun. This too was VERY difficult to get to the right place. Where it did hold, it held well. Where it missed, the fabric let go of the wire in a super obvious way.

I kept looking at it, and thinking I was procrastinating. In fact, this was not working. And I was not getting what I wanted or needed. So I reluctantly scrapped the whole thing.

Here is what she picked. (next to the old trials for contrast.)
They are big enough. And if blue is what she wants then blue it shall be.

Good luck to you with all of your store bought and home made creations!!