A Midsummer Night's Dream: Fairy Wings

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Fairy Wings
Completed November 2014

Items Made: Two Large and Seven Regular Pairs of Wings

I was asked by the costume designer at McLennan Community College if I could make 9 pairs of fairy wings for their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.  

I had never made wings before, but I said yes.  They came out AMAZING and now I'm a wing making master!  lol!

We needed wings for Oberon and Titania and the four named fairies in the play, plus they added 3 more because reasons?   My only parameters given by the designer were that she wanted them to be insect like... not high fantasy... and that she wanted Oberon's to be up and Titania's to be down.  

This was my design for the fairy court.  I believe these were based on bee wings.  I thought bees were also fitting as the fairies flit about caring for the queen.

For Titania, I used cicada wings as inspiration.  I thought at first butterfly, but in end, these were perfect.  It looked like her wings were a cape.  I really liked the shape.

For Oberon, I chose hornet wings.  It was a pretty obvious choice.  Plus the shape is kind of phallic, which adds another layer to the character.  

I won't go into a step by step tutorial on how I made them... but I do plan to do a tutorial on it.  

But all of the wings were made with 14 gauge wire.  The first two pairs I made were out of coat hangers, then I used baling wire I got a Lowe's.  The wire is cut and bent to shape. Pieces are joined with electrical or florist tape... or both.  Once that was done, I painted the frames.  The frames are sandwiched between layers of colored cellophane and the cellophane is bonded with a heat gun.  Then I cut them out using a wood burning tool.  

The fore wings (which are the bigger wings) are attached to the smaller hind wings with more electrical tape and then the wings are given a final shaping so they aren't flat and look as if they are growing from your shoulder blades. 

Here's a final set of the small wings.  The "U" shape is there so the wings can be slid into the back of a corset, or a back brace as was used in the production.  The cellophane gave the wings translucency so that you could see the "veins" and light would shine through the wings.  

Overall, I LOVE the way these turned out.  The big wings did get saggy over the run as the wire wasn't quite strong enough to hold the weight of the wings.  I think if I were to do them again, I would try some thin copper tubing or something that could support the weight a little better.  but for the smaller wings, the 14 gauge wire worked perfectly.