Realistic Looking Angel Wings

Ever thought about how cool it would be if you could make some angel wings that are unique and not like the bought ones? Well after having to think on my feet and make something that night with what I had around the house because all the shops were sold out of them, these Angel wings worked perfectly for my little girls' Christmas play, even if they did take me approx. 5 hours to do and was flying by the seems of my pants in the construction of them.

Get an old box, tape, scissors, a pen, some elastic and  around 50 muffin cup cake cases and you too can make these! Here's how....

After deciding what size you want to make the wings, cut out your cardboard box to allow enough space to allow the wings to be marked out in what ever shape you would like - I decided on the resting and not flying style. After you are happy with your design, you only need to draw half of it but make sure that the centre is on a fold in the box, as this will make it easier later on for not a more natural movement when they are being worn, but also good to gold up when not in use or for getting to the destination without damaging them too much. Cut half of the shape out and them fold it over to the other side and mark it out to ensure both wings are the same shape, then cut the rest of the shape out.

Now grab your patty pans and start to cut them in half. I went for white ones as I was making white angel wings, but you could be as creative as you like with colours. After you cut them it is ok to flatten them out as its the zig-zag edges that we are looking for for the feather effect.

Starting at the bottom of the wings (as my logic was to use the zig-zag effect of the patty pans to cover the sticky tape on the cardboard), fold one of the cut pasty pans in half and wrap it around the base of the wing as you can see below, also giving it a nice wing tip 'flick in' if you like. Keeping in mind that you will need to do both sides of the wings, these folder sections are already covering the same spot on the other side so you need to ensure that the fold is square and that the same coverage is obtained on both sides.

After sticking them down on both sides with sticky tape, place another one on top of it ensuring that the zig-zag patter meet together to continue the feather effect, and again stick down with sticky tape. Them proceed on both sides of the wings, slowly moving up the wings are shown.

Keep moving up the wings until you get to a stage that you can place a full half cut patty pan over one side of the wing. It's here that you will need to flip the wings over and do the same on the other side (and I found it a good idea to keep both sides upto date so you get them both looking the same). Then add another one to the inside of the wings before putting more edges on that not only hold the large pieces in place, but also seal the edges so that no cardboard can be seen.

As you can see from the image below using the side folds it hold it all into place and you get to see the effect of the zig-zags making lots of small feathers.

So remembering to do both sides with the same amount of patty pans, continue using the half section to slowly wrap around the top shape of the wings. 

And continue until you have covered the wings like the image below.

It was at this stage that I though about leaving the top of the wings like this, but them realised that there was nothing really holding the half sections down and you could still see the cardboard on the sides. I also wanted to continue the look of the folded feathers around the sides, so i continued to seal the edges and middle.

Like I said before, make sure that you are doing both sides of the wings (unless you are hanging them on a wall or something) and at the same time - you will be happy that you did!

Now the wings are done so to speak, but they need to be attached to the back of my little girl for her performance, so small width but not too small elastic was great for it. She was asleep at the time as I was burning the midnight oil when making these, so I got the dress that she was wearing and tried to visualize where her shoulders and arms would sit in the dress and where to place the elastic on the wings.

So after I worked out where to put the holes (both the distance apart and the height of the holes) - gently popping four (4) holes with a pencil through the desired locations should do the trick.

Working out how long to make the elastic loops so that it is not too loose and they just fall down, or too tight and try to cut the arms off my little girl, I used my head and thought about how deep her shoulders are, thinking about where they are sitting on your shoulders, the dress and them giving a little bit for tension. Somehow I came up with a distance of four (4) fingers as it just looked right. Of course I would not know until the morning and tied them off with a simply knot that could be easily undone if required (I just hoped that I did not cut the elastic too short)

When all tied up and cleaned up, it looked like the images below. I was especially happy that even after all this work, the wings could still easily still fold in half.

As a bonus that was not required but I though about doing it anyway as the night had well and truly given way for morning at this stage, I decided to make a quick halo for her too out of pipe cleaners and a broken off skewer for the support.

Start off with two (2) yellow pipe cleaners and join them together in the same fashion that coat hangers are held together to form a round shape that you them need to shape into a circle.

Generate the stick that will hold the halo about the head with a clean cooking skewer and break off the point. Then tightly wrap around two (2) white pipe cleaners as shown.

When they are both done, join them together in the same way that you joined the yellow ones and shape.

The attached it to the wings with some more sticky tape to the inside of the wings so that when they are worn you do not see the bare skewer

And now for the finished result!

So as you can see when the wings are placed against the dress that is going to be worn, you can get a good idea of what they will look like. I did this for any last minute adjustments that I thought may be required, but it looked ok so I decided to leave it and hope for the best.

So to my complete happiness, the elastic was just right, they sat in the right spot, Little Miss below was beyond happy and they lasted the whole day and beyond. (they are still in the cupboard for the next time)

The halo was used also but only the top ring being worn like a headband (not shown)