Fairy Wings Tutorial

With Mid-Summers Eve and Fairy Day being only 2 days away the glitter if flowing freely at our home. I ventured out trying to find my girls some fairy wings and ended up with nothing after visiting four different party/costume stores. Soooooo we made our own.

I found them simple enough to do although the decorating took a while to finish.

List of Supplies Needed:

4 wire coat hangers,

Duct Tape,

2 pair of tights or sheer toe nylons. Queen size works best and leaves for fuller, plumper wings. The wings shown here used a size B Nylon and the wings turned out a little big skinner than I had originally imagined them. I’m now going to make an effort to look at the fun designs they often sell on holiday tights to see what marvelous wing designs they would make.

Modge Podge and paintbrush,

Glitter,

Not pictured but also needed,

1/2 inch wide elastic,

Safety Pin

Pliers for helping bend the wire.

Other items you could consider using are acrylic paints,

Flowers and the wire to wrap them,

Possible a glue gun if you don’t want to wrap your flowers with wire.

Extra embellishments for your wings, jewels, flowers, ribbon, leaves. Ohhh too much fun.

Straighten all four hangers then twist the ends like shown.

Wrap a small piece of duct take around the ends to help hold them securely.

Shape your four pieces creating two identical but flipped top pieces and like-wise for the remaining two lower butterfly pieces. Sorry they are hard to see in the picture.

Using more duct tape attach a top piece to a bottom piece. Do not attach all four at once.

Once those two pieces are together feed the leg of one tight or nylon over one of the frames. Cut the tights at appropriate length and then tie the ends.

Repeat the process with the other wire frame. After you have covered all four frames use duct tape to secure both halves.

Hey, they are already starting to look like fairy wings. Now it’s time to decorate.

Paint stripes of Modge-Podge where you want the glitter pixie dust to adhere to your wings.

Sprinkle on the glitter.

Tap it off and enjoy the sparkles.

Want to try something different. Pull out your acrylic paints.

Choose the dominant color you want featured and liberally apply it around the entire edges of all the wings.

Have your heavier concentration of color on the inside of the wing and work outward using finer strokes.

Experiment with layering colors… or paint veins.

Once again, your imagination is the limit.

Once the wings are dried. Measure 1/2 inch wide elastic in a figure 8 around shoulders of intended fairy child to get the right length.

Secure the elastic in it’s shape with a safety pin.

Now attach the elastic to the side of the fairy wings that will touch the back with, can you guess? – Duct tape.

I used colored matching duct tape and even though it looked fine it looks even better if you wire wrap some flowers of the middle of the wings.

That’s it, now your fairies are ready to fly.

And no one will be the wiser that you made them yourself.

Now I’ve just got to make some wings for me. So I can fly with my girls.

Here are some other similar sites with slightly different ways to make very similar wings.

Threadbanger has a fun You-tube tutorial for making your own wings. Click on the picture to catch the link.

Wiki-How also has a How to Make Fairy wings article. Click on the picture to see their instructions.

Enjoy dressing your little fairy.