Faery Wings

I didn't finish my project today, so here is one I finished last month. I am in a contest based on the Hunger Games for crafters. For this round, we had to create something for a faery court.

I have been wanting to make a pair of fairy wings for a while now, but never had a real reason to get it done. Originally I had been thinking of playing around with heat-shrink window film and wire, but I am glad that all my happy accidents lead me in a different direction. It began when I went to the shed to look for wire. I had none, but on my way back into the house I saw the bucket full of mesquite branches I had recently harvested from my dad's windfall tree. I planned on making baskets with the branches, but they weren't pliable enough to do baskets. However, they were just right for wings.

I had florist tape on hand, so I began wrapping the wings in white florist tape. Then I experimented with the plastic and some translucent stained glass paint. The paint looked okay, but it just looked too fake to have branches covered in plastic. I thought back to a time when I made a dream catcher from a teardrop-shaped branch and went digging through my yarn. Rather than doing a dream catcher knotted pattern, I tried crocheting it to make a more dragon-fly like pattern.

Since there were  12 different "winglets" to fill with design, I varied the theme of the design, adding in glass beads resembling pearls on the upper wings and switching to a yarn that was white with metallic silver filament for the bottom.

When I finished the four wings, I cut a piece of aspen to create the harness. I chiseled off one side so it was flat, then I drilled 4 holes for the wings, 2 holes for the harness straps and 1 hole in back to make it hang on a wall as art when I wasn't wearing it. Then I used hand carving tools and a dremel to custom carve each hole to best fit each wing's branches. When everything was carved, I went back and gave the aspen piece an over-all sanding.

I made a strap from some green twill tape and sewed it so that it fits around my shoulders and rests on my upper back. I then used florist wire and more florist tape to secure the wings to the wood.  I added in some silk flowers and a few feathers to complete the look. This project took roughly 30 hours to complete.

They look nice on my wall, but I am selling these at the comic con this weekend. They are too hard to ship, so if they don't sell, I will be hanging them back on my wall.