on making wings
Heipati!
I wanted to post some behind the scenes, WIP photos on making the fairy wings for ‘Us who glow in the dark’ (2026-). This was such a fun project, and the wings got a rather nice reseption so I thought I’d share some extra pictures on the process. :3
Creating wings with a formidable wingspan without making them too heavy required some trial and error. Third time was the charm, as prototype 1 was too heavy and #2 was pretty good, but visually not what we wanted.
Two pairs of prototype wings. Lower pair made with liquid latex, recycled tights and wire. Too heavy, materials repurposed later. Upper pair made with recycled synthetic fabric, wire and hot glue. These were a good weight, and were a good prototype to remake into the final wings.
While the prototype 2 was on the right track, having the wire go all around the wing created some unwanted wrinkles and heft. So the third set of wings had a raw fabric edge on the lower half of the wing, burnt to prevent fraying. But ahh, the fun part; texture!! As obvious from the picture above, the second prototype was really dull with almost no texture or colour. I wanted to create some organic texture, and blessed be the crafters and artist of the interned for sharing the trick of bubble-painting.
Plastic bottle, with a mesh fabric attached on it (with a random piece of yarn) = ultimate bubble blowing machine!
Acrylic paint mixed with water and a little dishwashing liquid (no, did not use fairy-branded, would’ve been funny though), use some sort of mesh, straw, whatever and blow some bubbles beibii
Behold, texture!
After getting a good base texture with the bubbles, I used fabric stiffener and continued refining the look via reflecting elements, hot glue and more paint.
Reflective ribbon without flash
Aaand with flash!
Hand-painting the final touches really sold the wings for me. I defined the cell shapes, added a pop of colour to create a gradient, some white for highlight.. I could’ve continued painting additional detailing endlessly. Thank goodness for deadlines eh
Final result! Hot glue was used to outline the cells and to make structural elements at the upper stem of wing appear more organic. The stem structure was hidden with thick felt, brushed out and painted to look like fur/hair.
Briefly about the structural stuff;
I knew I wanted to hide how the wings were attached as well as I could, in order to enforce the illusion of the performer becoming a fairy, instead of dressing up as one. This also happens on stage, so no permanent fixtures were an option. Soo, hidden magnets? After checking that 1. the performer did not have a pacemaker or other medical devices and 2. the sound designer was ok with magnets on stage, I made a harness with some semi-heavyduty magnets sewn onto it and secured their pairs onto the wings. And they held beautifullyyyy.
Sointu Saraste dancing with the wings. Video captured at the general rehearsals in Ehkä, Turku. Look at her go!
So this was my blabbering walkthrough of my work process! Def not a tutorial of any kind, but given the limited resources we had on this production, I was very happy with how these turned out.
Thanks for reading!
<3
M
