EL Wire Fairy Wings

Fairy wings are totally awesome to begin with, especially at raves. What better way to make them more rave-appropriate than to make them light up? EL wire is awesome for this, as it keeps them light (tee hee) enough to dance in.

Some Back-Story:
A while ago I made a pair of fairy wings with the goal of attaching EL wire to them to make them more awesome. I used threadbanger's fairy wing tutorial for this. They were a huge hit at every rave went I to. Their success led me to upgrade them. They went from having one simple pass of purple around the edges to purple and blue around the edges with purple eye spots. This pair is made by following the easier route in this instructable.

At one rave, I got a request from a fellow raver named FireFly for a pair of wings. Since she gives away huge pieces of kandi and is all-around nice, I thought she deserved them. I drew out a concept sketch pretty soon after, but became lazy and didn't work on them for over a month.

Then I saw instructables was having an EL wire contest. Finally, something to get me to actually make FireFly's wings! Nothing like a deadline to get you going.

While this tutorial is primarily about how I made FireFly's wings (the harder method), I included how I made my first pair, so that anyone who wants to do this doesn't have to spend more time than they want to. If you are doing the easier method, ignore steps three through fourteen.

Here's a demo of the easier method:

(Sorry about the low picture quality, it was the best my camera could do.)

The threadbanger tutorial mentioned in the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z20jIu7XJk

Let's get this out in the open: This instructable is neither cheap, nor quick. The easier method took me about five hours and about $50 in its simplest form, $80 in its current state ($30 more EL wire was added to form a second color around the edge). The hard method cost about $80 and took about 20 hours to make.

More importantly, if want to make yourself some wings, disregard the previous paragraph and go for it!

Giving credit where credit is due:
Cool Neon Wire - awesome company. They includes heat shrink tubing and copper tape if you need to solder your wire for free with your order.
Threadbanger's Tutorial - the basis for the "easier method" and a great tutorial all together.
Soldering Instructable - I used cool neon's guide myself, but it's the same method.
General EL Wire Attaching Instructable - helped me make my first pair of wings.
SparkFun's Tutorial on Sequencing - great if you want to use a micro controller with your wire.
That's Cool Wire - the sponsor of this awesome competition.

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Step 1: Choosing Your Path

So at this point, you have two choices. The hard way, or the easier way. Both will give you something totally awesome, but the hard way is much more open ended (and much trickier).

The easier method consists of following a laid out, fairly easy tutorial made by threadbanger for fairy wings, and adding EL wire to them. You can pretty much ignore steps three through fourteen.

The hard method consists of coming up with your own design and (depending on your design) can include a lot of sewing. While the picture is of my finished product, this method is very open ended and I encourage you to plan your own design. Go crazy!

badideasrus says: Oct 11, 2011. 6:17 AM

u know u can use paint to make a picture larger? just got to file, page set up, and where it says scaleing there should be two check boxes. one says adjust to, the other says fit to. click fit to. now just tell it how many pages it should fit to in the boxes next to it. for proof that it scaled it, go file, print preview. it will show you how many pages it fits. you may have an inch or so with nothing on it (the margins) you can adjust those in page set up too, or just cut them off when you print it out.

mmikesell says: Apr 17, 2011. 2:34 PM

Some people use a wing jig for this. What you can do is tape down the outline over a piece of wood or maybe even cardboard. Then hammer in needles all around it, leaving enough space to fit the wire around the needles. This ensures every wing is symmetrical as possible. Great for those who want to make many wings for sales purposes.

mmikesell says: Apr 17, 2011. 2:31 PM

To avoid this step, you can instead purchase a roll of 14 gauge galvanized steel wire form Home Depot very cheaply. Or a more expensive but better choice would be plastic coated copper wire.

Junk Mail says: Oct 24, 2010. 6:34 AM

Dude, sweet wings. Where did you get the striped pants? I kinda need a pair.

DesChamos (author) in reply to Junk MailOct 25, 2010. 1:30 AM

I made the stripped pants out of two pairs of pants. i just cut loops of fabric from the legs of one pair and sewed them on to the legs of the other pair.