#cosplay wings tutorial

So, it begins! 

To preface, these took me about one summer (2 months) of on-and-off work to complete, though I was not working on them every night. If you were to work on these for a few hours each day, you could probably finish them much faster! 

I also wanted to create these for as low of a cost as possible. Thus, all my tools are either things that I had on hand (like a hot glue gun/comb, and even simple pencil/paper for the patterns) or things that I bought on sale at Michael’s. 

DISCLAIMER: In retrospect, I would have used a stronger material for the supports. I used thin balsa wood strips, which held up very well when walking, running, and spinning- but did eventually start to break after a few hard hits at con. If you’re making these at home I’d recommend experimenting with a few different supports (including thick metal/ wire that would bend more before fracturing if you’re planning on being a little more rough with them) and find what works best for you!

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MATERIALS: 

- 2 large sheets of white project paper

- 2-3 rolls of thin EVA foam (Outer feather layers) 

[Choose thickness based on your preference! I believe I used 4mm]. 

- 1-2 rolls of Thick EVA foam (Base Wing + Backpiece) 

[Once again, choose thickness based on your preference! I used 6mm]. 

- 10+ strips of thin balsa wood for supports (SEE DISCLAIMER) 

- 1 pack of 18 gauge stem wire 

- White Scrap fabric for the shoulder straps (1/2 yard?? Approximately?? I used a skirt.) 

- One long, thin strip of black fabric for the waist strap. 

TOOLS: 

- Wide-Toothed comb

- Hot glue gun

- Pencils, tape, 

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PROCESS:

I began by looking online for a wing design I liked online. I found this diagram of the feather groups that I liked, and printed it out on a regular-sized sheet of printer paper. 

This would be the basis for my wing pattern. However, a sheet of printer paper is small- and I needed them to be life size! So, in order to save money- I decided to scale them up manually using a grid-and-pencil-method. 

I folded the paper into eight sections lengthwise, 

And width wise- creating 64 little evenly spaced ‘boxes’ on the original piece of paper. Then, using two taped-together pieces of large project paper purchased from Michael’s, I did the same exact thing on a larger scale. 

For reference, I numbered each of the boxes on the small sheet of paper 1-64, and labeled the corresponding boxes on the LARGE sheet of paper with the same numbers. (This was mostly so I wouldn’t mix up the boxes when I transferred them over!).

Next comes the really fun part. I hand-copied the contents of each small box to each large box, piece-by-piece. 

It’s very important when you’re doing this to ONLY copy the lines in each box, one at a time. It’s very easy to get carried away if you try to copy the whole picture at once and mess up the proportions. 

I assure you that while it’s tedious, copying the pattern box-by-box is the best method to accurately scale up a pattern if you do not have access to (or do not want to pay for) a professionally printed poster. 

At long last, the full pattern was traced! Next, I cut it out as cleanly as possible- following the outermost edge. 

Next, I rolled out my (thickest) roll of EVA foam and traced the right and left wings onto the sheet. MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE that you have configured them so that both will fit onto one sheet (one facing left and one facing right) before tracing - if you do make a mistake, trying to erase pencil from the foam once you’ve drawn on it is nearly impossible! (I did this, and had to apply a few layers of opaque oil paint to ‘cover up’ the misplaced pencil lines. 

[Don’t throw away that paper pattern though, it’ll come in handy for every layer after this!]

Then, I simply cut those foam tracings out to get two of my first, ‘base’ wing layers. (This is the point at which you may want to paint over any misplaced pencil lines if they remain on the wing with an oil-based spray paint to to hide your crimes). :) 

Next, return to the paper pattern, and cut ONLY the straight lines between the bottom-most layer of feathers, as shown: 

Then, place that paper pattern directly on-top of the foam cut out, and grab your comb- because it’s texturing time baby!! 

Using the back of a wide-toothed comb, gently rub the back of the comb back and forth along each of the wing ‘separation’ lines that you just cut out. This creates the illusion of separate feathers on the otherwise un-textured foam! 

(Don’t worry too much if they’re a little messy at first! Actual bird feathers aren’t perfectly straight and clear.) 

Then, once again using the back of the brush, make ‘center seam’ lines marking the middle of each feather. These should be a little less defined than the lines separating each of the feathers themselves. 

Next, use the wide teeth of the comb to ‘carve’ diagonal texture lines into each feather. I like to think of the lines on the right side of each center seam going ‘SouthEast’ and those on the left side of each seam pointing ‘SouthWest’.  

Yay texture!! 

Repeat this process for both the front and back of both sets of wing bases (so you’ll be doing this four times in total). 

NOTE: You don’t have to texture the parts of the wing that will be covered by the next layer. I’d recommend texturing only about an inch or so above where your ‘wing separation’ lines end. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ON TO LAYER TWO!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once your base wings are done, it’s time to start the next layer! Start by cutting away the lower layer of feathers from the PAPER pattern (I told you it’d come in handy again!)   

Then, lay this on top of the THIN foam sheet, and cut out FOUR versions of this pattern (two facing right, and two facing left). 

(Sorry for the crusty image quality, the lighting in my room was determined to make my tracing lines appear as faint as possible). 

Once you’re done tracing, cut those bad boys out! 

Once again, return to your paper pattern and cut along the lines separating each feather. 

Just like you did on the first layer, place that paper pattern directly on top of your foam pieces and use the back of the comb to gently trace those lines into the foam. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: 

For these thinner wing parts, you only need to texture ONE SIDE of each sheet. This is because each of these smaller layers will be glued to the lower layer (so one side will be hidden from the outside). Therefore, make sure that you’ve oriented your wing layer pieces so that two are textured on the ‘left side’ (as shown below) 

And two are textured on the ‘right side’ as shown below: 

(Don’t mind the slow loss of sanity as demonstrated by the snapchat caption) :)

The idea here is that you’re going to end up with four thin foam wing layers - which will be placed on the front left base wing, back left base wing, front right base wing, and back right base wing respectively. Only the side of each wing layer that will be visible from the outside need to be textured. 

I didn’t take a picture of these finished layers unfortunately, but you should end up with something roughly like this: 

(Excuse the godawful handwriting. Crafting I can do, but writing legibly? Mmm. Doesn’t sound like me.) 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ON TO LAYER THREE!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This should be getting familiar now: Once again, you’re going to cut away the bottom layer of feathers from your PAPER pattern, and trace four versions (two facing right and two facing left) onto your THIN foam sheet. 

Then, cut the feather separation lines into your paper pattern, ‘carve’ them onto (one side of) each foam layer with the back of the comb, draw your ‘center seam’ lines, and use the bristles to texture those bad boys. 

You should end up with four pieces of foam. Two of which should be textured on the right-facing side, and two of which should be textured on the left-facing side. 

GREAT JOB! You should now have ten separate pieces of foam: 

- Two ‘base’ wings made of thicker foam, both textured on BOTH sides. 

- Four ‘Second layer’ pieces, two of which textured only on the right-facing side, and two of which textured only on the left-facing side. 

- Four ‘Third layer’ pieces, two of which textured only on the right-facing side, and two of which textured only on the left-facing side. 

At this point, (if only for the sake of consolidating the ridiculous pile of foam pieces that were accumulating around my room), f I began to put them together! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ON TO CONSTRUCTION!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the point at which I finally began to add supports and hot glue the layers I’d created together. 

For supports, I used about six(?) thin balsa wood strips purchased from Michael’s. I’m not sure of the exact brand I used, but they look a bit like this: 

BIG DISCLAIMER: 

If you’re planning on running around/ roughhousing with these wings on, I highly recommend looking into slightly bendier (or simply stronger) supports. While these wings held up decently well prior to con, they began to break after getting hit a few times by other con-goers (including this kid on an electric scooter who slammed into them while racing down the street?? People are wild sometimes). Since wood is pretty much un-salvageable after it’s snapped in half, a light (but strong) plastic or metal support may be preferable. 

With that out of the way, back to your regularly scheduled programming! 

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Starting with the back of the wings, I placed the second and third wing layers over the base wings to get an idea of where things would be when they were put together: 

Then, I began to lay two wooden supports (in a triangular formation) between the base layer and the second layer of wings, hot glue-ing the top of the wing pieces together as I went: 

Then, I flipped the wing over to the other side (the front side), and placed one support between the base wing and the second layer, configured approximately in-between where the other two supports laid. ...

...Ending up with something like this, with three supports sticking out of the side: 

(front of wing pictured below) 

Then, once again looking at the back side of the wing, I placed one more wooden support parallel with the top-most of the three supports I had already done. 

Then I hot-glued the third wing layer on top of that support, completely hiding it.

Then, on the front side of that wing, I simply glued the second wing layer to the correct spot (without a support). 

At this point, I had one full wing, made of five pieces of foam and four balsa wood strips total. 

Finally, the process was to be repeated... for the other wing. 

AT LAST: WE HAVE TWO SEPARATE WINGS, shown below: 

At this point, you can see that I began experimenting with how the balsa supports should be intertwined in order to get the least strain on those thin little wooden pieces. 

I found that the best configuration to do so (in order to minimize strain and, as a bonus, take up less horizontal room), I would align these strips at 90-degree angles with each other, and sort of ‘weave’ the balsa wood strips through each other as shown: 

As I did so, I began to hot glue the wood pieces together and strengthen these connections by weaving the 18 gauge stem wire around each intersection. 

I ran into a bit of a problem at this point, however- which was that there was no support at the very top of where the wings met (at the uppermost part of the shoulders). To remedy this, I cut a thin hole into the third wing layer of each side, and threaded an additional balsa wood strip underneath this third layer, as shown: 

Then, for a bit of extra support, I wove one more strip along the center of all of the previously-made supports, and connected it with got glue and wire. 

At last, everything had been connected! At this point I began to snap off extra lengths of balsa wood that were ‘sticking out’ too far as shown below: 

If you made it this far, fabulous work! the next (and final) part of this project was making the back piece (to stabilize those breakable little balsa wood strips) and straps (to attach the wings to my back!) 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~BACK PIECE + STRAPS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Using four taped-together sheets of notebook paper, I had a friend trace the shape of my shoulders/ upper back onto the paper. Using the width of my shoulders as reference, I sketched a shape for the back feathers that I liked, and cut it out (comparing/ adjusting it as needed by placing it on the wings themselves) 

Then, I cut that shape out of THICK foam and checked that it fit comfortably on the center of my back, as shown. 

Then, I began work on the shoulder straps. Using the lining of an old white skirt for the fabric, I cut two long rectangles of this fabric and sewed them together longways.

Then, I sewed both into loops that comfortable (but firmly) fit around my shoulders, and hot-glued them to the concave side of the back piece. 

Finally, I hot-glued this back piece to the FRONT side of the wings, with as many connections between this thick foam and the wooden supports as possible (for stability). 

(Front view below) 

(back view below) 

Then, using the same method as I did for the back piece, I traced a shape I liked for the back of the wings onto notebook paper, and cut it out using the thick foam. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: In order to increase the overall stability of the wings, and partially hide the still-somewhat visible supports at the top of the wings, I added a long strip of foam at the top of this piece and wrapped it around the front of the wings, as shown: 

At this point, the wings were wearable, which was very exciting! They did not collapse under their own weight, and withstood walking, turning, and even spinning relatively well. 

But I still had two issues: 

1. Due to the top-heavy nature of the wings, they tended to tilt forward such that the back piece made an angle with my back, with the bottom pushing out. 

2. When viewed from the back, the wings were a little bland. It needed some sprucing up! 

To solve problem one, I added a waist strap! 

For some reason, I took virtually no pictures of this part (I think I was finally too tired to care about properly documenting my work, lol)) - so the picture below is a rough sketch of what I did: 

I essentially made two small ‘loops’ of white fabric (the same way I made the shoulder straps, only I made the circumference of those little loops much smaller; big enough for only a strip of black fabric that would become the waist-tie.) I hot glued these loops near the bottom of the back piece (routinely picking up the entire construction and measuring it against my back to make sure the placements made sense), and finally threaded a strip of black fabric through the loops. 

NOTE: Because the waist piece (the strip of black fabric) is not actually attached to the wing construction and is instead threaded through, you can use ANY color of fabric you want- this means you can choose the waist strap color to match the cosplay you’re doing! (For my purposes, black blended in the best). 

To solve problem 2 (and add a bit more detail to the back of the wings, I sketched one last pattern on notebook paper, cut it out of the THIN foam, textured it with the comb, and hot-glued it to the back of the wings (the part that would be visible from behind). 

                   🥳 🎉AND WITH THAT, THE WINGS WERE DONE!!!! 🎉🥳

All in all, this process took about two months of on-and-off work, and while tedious at times, was incredibly fun and rewarding! 

If you’ve decided to create a pair of stationary wings using this tutorial, I wish you the very best of luck! Try not to get too discouraged if something doesn’t work out, either- this tutorial shows you the main (successful) steps in what was a long (mistake-filled) process. 

Many of these steps were a creative attempt at fixing problems that arose along the way, so the best advice I can give is to keep at it- and view issues not as roadblocks, but as opportunities to learn and come up with original solutions! 

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Congratulations on making it to the end of this long post! 

Please help me out by reblogging this post, and tune in to see more of my crafty creations over at alooxis_cosplay on instagram!