#impaling

VOICEOVER: So this is the correct hold, finger and thumb around the waist and keep those legs nice and wrapped in your hand. You don’t want to damage the wings.

[The fairy’s wings flutter wildly, their hands pushing helplessly at the fingers wrapped around its waist. There’s a tight ball of white material packed in its mouth.]

VOICEOVER: If the noise bothers you, you can just put a little ball of cotton in their mouths. Just grab it with your finest tweezers and shove it in when they open up. I don’t usually do that, I’ve gotten so used to the sound as part of the process, it’s honestly kind of calming! But I did it today for the sake of the sound quality. chuckles awkwardly

Now, I’ll show you the back pin first, I think it’s a liiittle easier for the beginners out there! Also for a lot of fairies the back of the wings is way more vibrant so if you want to show that off, the back pin is your choice. Now, I said that both these basic pins are accepted at most shows, but some only accept one or the other, some differ in how they split them up in categories, so make sure to do your research for the show you want to go to!

[During the follwing, the narration is matched by what’s happening on screen.]

VOICEOVER: So I start by putting a bit of glue on her chest — this is just to hold her in place until the first pins go in, so don’t use like superglue, you’ll want to peel it off at some point. Then just gently press her down on your styro — by the way, you don’t have to start out with this fancy set-up. Just any old box that’s large enough for your fairy with some styro in it will do while you’re still figuring out if this hobby is for you! Just press gently on the back for a bit, give the glue a little time to dry. Again, you want to be careful not to damage the wings.

[The fairy thrashes as hard as it can while pressed face-down against a surface. It has no effect whatsoever.]

VOICEOVER: Now, as you can see, most fairies will automatically fold their wings above when you do this, which is convenient because it keeps them out of the way while you pin the limbs. chuckles They just don’t want them pinned is what Lucky told me but there’s no way around it! Lucky has this habit of tucking her arms close to her body like this which some fairies do, just take your tweezers and geeently pull a wrist out. The judges don’t like too much bruising. There we go. We don’t want the arms fully spread, just think of like a preacher position, and then you can take your first pin — I’m using these gorgeous black-and-gold ones that go with almost any fairy, I’ll put a link in the description — and you just try to put it as close to the middle of the hand as you can. Back of the hand.

[A violent flinch jolts through the fairy’s body as the pin is driven through its hand.]

VOICEOVER: Now we do the same thing on the other side — make sure it’s symmetrical, that’s the most important thing even if the position isn’t perfect the word is emphasized in a way that makes clear the speaker thinks the concept of perfection a little silly in this context.

Okay, with both hands pinned, she’s basically set in place. That’s as long as the glue needs to last, for reference! Next, we’re going to pin her arms so the angle stays right. You want to go for the upper arm, just above the elbow, below the bone if that makes sense. Same on the other side, aim for symmetry… and that’s the arms basically immobilized.

So if you’ve got the angles right, this will also immobilize the shoulders, but it can take a bit of trial-and-error to get there! So if you’re just starting out, you might want to pin the shoulders separately as well. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, pretty much everyone does this when they start out. Like any skill, it takes time to get better at so take that time and don’t pressure yourself! For this, I’m taking some finer pins and aiming for the deltoid, this nice big bit of tissue here.

By the way, don’t worry about holes if you want to show without the shoulder pins later, these will fully heal up and be basically invisible within like a year or less, like earholes. Fairies are amazing little creatures.

The goal here is to have the body pinned down snug enough it’s hard for Lucky to turn her head, so it can stay nicely visible in profile view.

Next up, we pin the legs. A lot of fairies will kick but just carefully catch their ankle like this… The pins are pretty much the same as for the arms except the pin goes through the sole of the foot instead of the back. Then the thighs, just a bit above the knee where you still have a bit of tissue to safely drive the pin through, outside of the bone.

And now the big one! Wings! With the wings folded up like this, you first have to guide them down into the correct position — I have my rubber-tip tweezers just for that, you can also just tie or glue some cloth around a regular pair, the main point is you want to avoid damaging those gorgeous wings. Now when the wings are fully folded together like that I scoot in right above the back where there’s a little distance between the wing bases and then just sliiide up until I’ve got a good grip. When I’ve moved the wing down like this, I like to just slipe the tweezers across them — these ones are too heavy for Lucky to move with her wing alone so it’ll just stay where I want it.

The wings really just need one pin each, you can do two but they beasically move as one plane so there’s not too much leeway with just one. I put it in pretty close to the tip, between the veins. You can basically pick from these two spaces, just put it right in the middle between the veins and about the same distance from the wing edge as the veins are apart. And the most important thing is — you don’t pin the wings all the way down to the styro, you want them horizontal or even a little higher! Kind of a more naturalistic look.

Now this is a good reminder that the hindwings are separate from the forewings — they are kinda coupled, but they can move separately. Sometimes when you pin a really clumsy fairy they’ll end up with their hind wing over their forewing by the time you’ve pinned the forewing — Lucky knows better than that but let me show you what to do when that happens.

[She grabs the hindwing with the tweezers and pulls it up so it overlaps the forewing.]

VOICEOVER: You’ve got to be really careful when you put them back down where they belong, don’t be tempted to pull the hindwing backwards, just squish it past that teeny tiny overlap, their wings are flexible enough for that and you don’t want to risk damaging the wing musculature by forcibly pulling them into positions nature didn’t intend.

But yeah, same deal with the hindwing, one pin near the tip and to be clear, I’m not counting these cool little tails when I’m deciding what counts as the wing tip. They’re too narrow and an energetic fairy might tear them loose, which obviously injures them. Aaand the other pair of wings same deal, keep symmetry in mind, pin in the same spaces on the wings, try to keep the height even…

And here it is! The standard back pin. Doesn’t she look gorgeous?

Now for our n-

VOICEOVER: Now when unpinning, you want to keep your skin glue handy. Especially on the hands and feet, you want to close up those punctures quickly. It looks expensive but you need really little. You’ll want to get a fairy one because they come with these really tiny applicators and these will save you so much glue! For the rest of the holes, you can check yourself if there’s a lot of bleed, sometimes it’s unnecessary to even close them. Definitely err on the side of caution though!

Okay, you can see the glue we stuck her on with before actually still holds, so I’m going to gently peel her off, just grab by the shoulders and slowly pull up — you can see she’s trying to help, isn’t she cute? Keep a hold on the legs so she doesn’t give you the slip when-

[The fairy pushes down against the styrofoam with her arms, trying to pull free. With a soft ripping sound, she eventually comes loose. She is immediately returned to the same grip demonstrated before. Her chest is covered with glue residue and flocks of styrofoam stuck to it. She is breathing heavily.]

VOICEOVER: Now I’m just going to peel the glue off-

[A pointed fingernail approaches the fairy’s chest. The fairy tries to push it away at first, then grabs hold of its sides as if trying to guide its movements somewhat, even though her fingers can’t seem to properly hold on to the edges. The human starts scraping at the glue and eventually pulls it off.]

VOICEOVER: There we are — it’s normal to see a bit of swelling and or discoloration from this, that’ll clear up in a few hours. For the front pin we don’t actually need glue and you’ll see why in a moment. Now if Lucky were holding her wings together I’d use my tweezers to open them like before, but luckily chuckles she likes to flutter when I’m holding her, so I can just put my thumb on her back when they’re open and gently press down on the bases so they stay open — and then I set her down on her back and just hold her down by the chest.

[Two fingers press down on the fairy’s chest. Her hands uselessly scrabble and scrape at them.]

You can use gloves if your fairy has like sharp nails, haha, but Lucky’s fine. But yeah you can see why the front pin is a little bit trickier, the arms just have that much more freedom of movement until you get them.

Now, see? If I hold her down like this with the right amount of pressure — obviously be careful not to push too hard — her wings are already immobilized, so I don’t need that extra hand to manipulate them into the right position, I can just jab my pins right in, I’m using the same holes as before. This time we do pin all the way down against the surface. And now she’s fixed in place and you can let go.

Next I like to do the legs first with the front pin, because these will serve as a bit of a guideline where to put the hands. You want them slightly spread so the insides are visible, I forgot to mention this but same for the back pin, but not so far they align with the hindwings, we’re goint to need a little bit of space there — the pins go in the same places, foot, foo- whoops, yep sometimes they do slip away haha — foot, then above the knee, other leg.

Okay now because in the front pin the arms are pinned over the wings so you can’t pin at the elbows, for this one you actually do have to pin the shoulders — we go right through the deltoid, again with the finer pin because there isn’t that much room.

The next step is to catch those wrists again — usually this becomes easier once the shoulders are pinned, it does help impede arm movement a bit — and put the hand down in that little gap between the thigh and the hindwing, palm down again so the fingers can’t do anything weird. You see Lucky’s trying to tuck her other arm again — c’mon — there we go. Be patient with yourself and your fairy, better to take a few tries than to have to throw the entire show over a broken wrist.

Now, a lot of fairies are really good about keeping their head straight if you pin the shoulders and often you can convince them if not, Lucky’s usually good about it, but if all else fails, you can pin the head by the ears in the front pin. I’ll use my finest pins for this — I’ll just gently put a finger on her forehead and hold her head facing front. You want to be careful not to slip on the face because it’s a bit fragile! Now just push through the ear near the tip and fixate on the styro. Keep your hold until you’re done with the other side… there we go.

[The fairy’s eyes have been swimming for a while, and now finally enough liquid has collected into a drop to roll down.]

VOICEOVER: And here’s the front pin for you! I really don’t show Lucky’s underwing enough, it’s less vibrant overall but these little blue marks show amazing against the black, right?

You can see the teartracks and that — this is why I recommend pinning at least 24 hours before the show, so they can get it all out and then you can just clean them up and you’re both ready to go! If you have a few shows back to back, you can leave them pinned for a few days, but I’d really not recommend more than that, muscle atrophy is not pretty in every possible sense of the word! And of course you’ll have to remember to pipette-feed them.

But for now you just have to put the lid on to protect them from dust, it’s not like they can do it themself at this point. I show Lucky so often she has her own, haha.

[A glass lid in a wooden frame matching the one of the styrofoam base is placed over the fairy. Three holes are drilled in each side, and at the bottom there is a brass plaque engraved »Lucky Lady Indigo«.]

VOICEOVER: And that’s it! Make sure there’s enough ventilation taps the side of the frame and have fun at the show!

For the next video, a lot of you guys asked about the wire armature posing video and that’s still coming, it’s just taking a little longer, I’m still learning too, haha. But I hope I’ll have it done soon! Remember to like and subscribe for more stunning little superstars like Lucky, and see you in the next video! Byeee!