Small Fairy Wings WIP -pt 1

These wings are a late Christmas present to my two nieces, Lilly and Shay.   This is the first time I've made wings this small...excited to see how well they turn out.
These will be iridescent cellophane/vinyl wings. One will be blue and one pink as those are the girls respective favorite colors.  
-with these two I'm playing with the idea of adding in glitter designs between the layers...see how that turns out.

I'm wanting to make a 3rd pair to keep for myself as a model for future wings. Can't decide if I want to keep them clear-iridescent or add in some purple...as I really like purple.

-used plastic coated 14gauge galvanized wire and electrical tape to create the frames.

-this set is made up of 4 petals or 'wing segments'. Here is one of the top segments wrapped in brown floral tape. This one measures 17inches from the base straight up to the tip.

-Top and bottom segments together...

-from the top, tip to tip, measures 34 inches wide and from the tip of the top wing segment to the tip of the bottom wing segment, is 20 inches.  

*These are probably more 'medium' sized than 'small' wings by conventional standards...but still pretty small by own standards. :)

Black nylon fairy wings WIP pt3

These poor wings have been sitting for a little while during my work on the Steampunk stuff leading up to Halloween...but I've recently started back up working on them. Finishing the glitter swirls and detailing...adding some deep green dye touches.

These will 'hopefully' be finished soon as I've got another wing project I'm working on now...

I like to hang the wings from my diningroom light-fixture while they dry...well away from my kitties sharp claws. :D

Here you can see where I've added on the green dye around the edges and tips. Originally I wanted to try out my iridescent yellow glitter over the black nylon material...but I'm really liking the change to green a lot better instead. :)

Steampunk: Electroluminescent Wings -WIP part 9

These wings will be an on-going project for a while, I imagine...slow little updates here and there. That kind of thing...

I just picked up a few thin, brass candle stick holders from Goodwill this past week, which at some point I'll be trimming and applying to either the wings or the pack.

Announcement:
I'll be taking a little bit of a break, a temporary one, from Steampunk stuff for a little while... got just a little burned out, not totally, just a little bit. And right now I have other, pressing, concerns that I need to fully turn my attention to.
I still have plans of eventually (in the near future) creating more Steampunk hats and goggles and other such accessories and selling them through either ebay and/or my Etsy acct.  And I have some more ideas for some up-coming Fairy wings, floral garlands, and the like...including a Faery Queen crown which I want to make for myself for my role as the Faery Queen at next year's Renaissance Faire.
I'm hoping to be getting a new airbrush kit for Christmas...looking at a couple different iwata airbrush models on Amazon.com right now, trying to compare good vs bad points with each one.
-So if anyone reading this has experience with airbrushing, please pipe up -I'd love the opportunity to pick your brain.:D

I've added just a couple little decorative bits to the wings and finally got around to hanging them on the wall in my craftroom alongside my other Fairy wings:

Firstly, the selection of spray paints I've been working with over the course of my Steampunk projects.

Here's more work I've done on them....there's also some wear-and-tear to fix here and there.

-Using some wooden decorative flourishes, I painted and aged them and then attached them, using E6000 glue, to the faux-metal foam panels on the wings.
*these here are inside the smaller, bottom, set of wings.

 -This is the flourish applied to the outer side of the top, larger, wings.

-Fin~

Steampunk: Wings WIP -part 8 -Electrified!!

I feel like, finally, the wings are getting closer to completion.  They are certainly looking it now. :)

Since my last post I have added two smaller wing-petals to the Steampunk wings, riveted them, painted, etc.    I recently had ordered 9ft of green electroluminescent wire off of Amazon.com. I had, naively, assumed that 9ft would be more than enough wire to work with. Ha! Bull...I was SOOO wrong -which I came quickly to realize lastnight as I sat on my livingroom floor with the wire and a hot glue gun.  :/
-First, I suck with math...especially measurements. For some reason I've always had a problem accurately estimating measurements in my head. For instance, I often like to remodel rooms in my head...which I've been working on with my craftroom. I've got a table I'd like to build and set into my craftroom, so periodically I'll find myself mentally reconstructing the room and trying to figure out 'where' to set this table and move everything else around to fit cohesively...but also making sure everything will fit and taking in everything's sizes. Without a fail, I 'always' overestimate the amount of room I have to work with. Even though I've been in that room countless times, when it comes to actually reimagining that room in my mind -I give myself more room to work than I actually have.
Well....sadly, same with everything else.

I honestly expected 9ft to be a lot more than it, apparently, is in reality.:(   Due to the 9ft being inadequate, I wasn't able to outline the wings themselves as I'd wanted to, instead I ended up outlining the faux-metal panels on the wings. Which still looks really good. I'm now wondering if coming back to them later on and outlining the wings, too, might end up being too much...not sure, yet.

So, to start off...I didn't take more than one WIP pic of the smaller wing panels because they are exactly like the larger ones and I was in a hurry to get these done as I had an event to attend the next day in costume.

First up, the wing frame made of 12g galvanized wire:

I had wanted the 2nd set of wings to be quite a bit smaller than the first set...but, as I've said in the past: I, apparently, suck at doing 'small'....so, these 'smaller' wings turned out larger than I'd intended, but still small enough to work with.   Honestly...the smaller ones are about the size that I'd originally intended the wings to be in the first place. *laughs*

My little boy, Indy, had to be in the pic, I suppose. ;D

The inside, shown above, is unfinished at that point...I wore them to my event like this, but I really doubt that 'anyone' noticed...they were so into how the front side looked, anyway.:)

-This is how I've been hanging the wings in my diningroom space while working on them. That is actually the stand for my 4 folding tables, which are actually set up against the wall in the background there to hold my Steampunk supplies and stuff.
-but in this pic you can better see the paint job on the metal mesh of the wings.















Late in the evening I finally went down to check my mail box and was delighted to find that, amongst a couple of packages of stuff I'd recently ordered, there was my electroluminescent wire -huzzah!:D

 -In the image on Amazon there's nothing set up against this for size comparison...so I had assumed that this wire and the battery pack was, indeed,  larger than it actually is.  I'm quite thankful that the battery pack is quite smaller...but was surprised at how thin the wire itself is.  

Well, it may be quite thin, but it gives off a hell of a strong glow! :) 














I only took one WIP shot of me attaching the wire to the wings as it really wasn't that exciting and I didn't want to keep stopping to take a photo. I just used hot glue to attach it..easy as that:

And here are some finished shots of it:

 

I think they look really cool with both the electroluminescent wire and the plasma discs turned on together.

 -Here I'm showing the finished inside of both sets of wings.  I need to get one more package of the nail heads to finish off one of the larger wing panels and then that part is done.    I'm quite happy with how much better they look with the nail heads and the decorative flat-backed marbles.

I've got some decorative wood panel pieces which I've already painted and started the aging process on which I'm thinking of adding to these wings. I'm not sure, yet...going to play around with them on the wings and the wing pack before doing anything permanent.  

*Regarding the wing pack....I haven't done anything more to it since my last post....I wasn't happy with how the newly silver painted/aged cylinder turned out...been debating on going back to the aged brass or trying again with the silver. I like the contrast between the aged silver and brass...but not certain, yet.    The wing pack will be a continuing work-in-progress for a while. Unfortunately, it won't be nearly finished before Halloween...but that's ok. It'll be close enough.

-I'm taking the wing pack to a friend's tomorrow evening and he's going to help me get the wings attached to the inside of the pack via some metal clamps and screws.   And then I'm going to add some padding and straps. I may take the straps with me and see if I can get his help in making sure I get that done correctly.  

So far this month I've had two opportunities to wear the wings out in costume -once as just the 2-wing petal set and then last week with the 4-wing petal set up. Both times I just wedged it down the back of my bodice -same as I do with all of my fairy wings. Well, for some reason, that wasn't working well. The Steampunk wings kept sliding from one side to the other and were continually tilting, which was odd to me as my fairy wings always stand up totally straight and I have very little to no problems with them.  Granted, these are quite top-heavy, but I have another fairy wing set that I made this past Aug. which are really big and heavy, too...more so than these. 

Before I end this post, a few more pics of the wings all lit up:

 -these are upside down and that's part of my lap.
You can see on the left side, the larger wing, is the unfinished faux-metal panel...that's the one I need more nail heads for.

 Leaning up against my livingroom's coffee table. -

-And this is how they are right now. Even with the wire turned off, I think they look pretty cool with the wire around them like this.:) 

*The battery pack currently is just clipped onto the electroluminescent wire at the base of the wings...but if all goes well, it'll be attached to the inside of the wing-pack.

A quick note on the electroluminescent wire: it has a button on the battery pack which has 3 function options...one is a static light (steady, consistent), the 2nd is a slow pulse, the 3rd is a fast pulse.

This wire looks really cool and is light-weight and the battery pack only requires 2 AA batteries. All very awesome and also amazingly inexpensive. $7 -not including the S&H.

Now, the con:  when turned on, it emits this low but sharp metallic buzzing noise. I'm hoping that while I'm wearing the wings out and about, the sound won't be noticeable; but in my apt, even with the tv on, it's pretty noticeable.   

Otherwise, a pretty great product.    I have some ideas for more uses with this stuff and wings in the future.:)

Thoughts?

Thanks!:D

Steampunk: Wings WIP -part 7

Doing a little more work on my wings...I'm actually working on a smaller pair of wings that will sit inside this set, but slight off-set.

But for now....

 

Steampunk: Wing Pack WIP -part 5

On the suggestion of a friend, I decided to try painting one of the turbine cylinders an aged silver while leaving the rest of the pack the aged brass....I wanted to do one silver first to see if I actually liked it.
-Unfortunately, the paint job wasn't turning out how I wanted...will have to re-do. But I like the contrast of the aged silver against the aged brass.

 

With the black paint:

-I think I didn't let the silver fully dry here before spraying on the black and that may be why it bubbled up like this. Not liking the effect.:/

And now with the aging effect:

-unfortunately, here you can see where I didn't put down enough layers of the silver paint first...so then when I was trying to remove the black over-paint using acetone, I went too far and started removing the silver and the brass...so that black is the plastic of the toy boat beneath...went too far.:(

Will be trying this again at a later date.