This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase from one of my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions and recommendations are entirely my own.

How to Make DIY Fairy Wings with Cellophane, an Easy to Follow Tutorial

by Megan | Posted on January 29, 2020May 23, 2021

Learn how to make these DIY fairy wings with cellophane in the easy to follow, step by step tutorial!

A friend recently shared some gorgeous pictures of her children in a fairy tale style photoshoot. In some of the pictures she shared, her daughters had on some beautiful fairy wings and I fell in LOVE with them right away!

For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted to make some and do a (less formal — I’m not a photographer, after all) photoshoot with my kids! So after the kids were in bed that night, I stayed up and researched how to make “realistic” fairy wings.

I found a handful of tutorials, but, honestly, I wasn’t blown away by any of them. They all seemed to kind of breeze through the instructions without giving a ton of details or showing many — if any — pictures. Many of them included extra steps that I couldn’t figure out why they were necessary. But after looking through several, I was able to come up with a plan for how I wanted to make my DIY fairy wings.

And I decided that I was going to take lots of pictures so I could make a detailed tutorial for anyone else who might be looking for a detailed, easy to follow step-by-step tutorial for iridescent fairy wings!

So here it is!

Table of Contents

DIY Fairy Wings Tutorial

Gather Supplies

12 gauge aluminum craft wire in color of choice

this kind of wire is thick but is easy to bend and shape so it’s great for DIY fairy wings (make sure you get aluminum wire— other metals aren’t as pliable)

the color won’t be super obvious once your fairy wings are made, but it can add a subtle touch. I knew I wanted a more nature fairy vibe, so I chose brown wire, but other colors would complement other kinds of fairies (think blue for a water or air fairy, or red, orange, or yellow for a fire fairy, for example).

cellophane (the stuff people wrap gift baskets in) in color of choice

I used iridescent cellophane because I was going for a more natural look (think dragonfly-esque), but any color will work

spray adhesive

poster board

pencil

sharpie

needle nose pliers

wire cutters or tin snips (ya’ll, I LOVE my tin snips—they come in surprisingly handy surprisingly often for this crafting gal, haha!)

strong (but still bendable) wire or an old metal hanger

heat gun or iron (I go over how to make fairy wings with a heat gun and also how to make fairy wings with an iron in this tutorial)

Let’s make those DIY fairy wings!

Design Your Wings

Ok, so the first thing you want to do is design your fairy wings. Sketch out one fairy wing on the poster board. There are lots of fairy wing design examples you can look at online if you’re not sure what kind of look you want and need some inspiration.

Be sure to consider how large or small you want your fairy wings to be when you’re sketching out your design. I made mine for my daughters, so they are on the smaller side.

Make the Fairy Wing “Skeleton” Out of Wire

Once you have your wing design fleshed out, it’s time to start working with the 12 aluminum craft gauge wire.

Form the first and largest piece by carefully shaping the wire along the design you drew. Cut the wire slightly larger than your line, so you can curl the tips in with the needle nose pliers – this is to make sure there are no sharp points sticking out, plus it adds a more whimsical look. 😊

forming wire on top of a diy fairy wing design on posterboard — forming the wire to the wing design

piece of wire formed to a fairy wing design on poster board — cut and curl the tips

If you don’t want curled tips, though, you could add a little ball of hot glue on the end of the wire tips once you’ve finished making the wire wing frame. I didn’t use this method, so I can’t attest to how well it works, but I think it’d be fine.

* TIP: To make nice angles with wire, first bend it all the way (as you can see to the left), and then open it up until it’s at the angle you actually want. This creates a nice, firm kink in the wire that will hold its shape really well, as you can see below.

Now shape the next line with wire, cutting it with about an extra inch/ inch and half of wire on each end. Used the pliers, wrap the ends around the wire you’re attaching it to. Once you have it attached, clamp the curls down hard so that they’re secure.

*TIP: Use a sharpie to mark where you want to cut your wire as well as where you want to attach each piece together. You’ll be moving this wire wing frame all over while making it, and it’s much easier to just mark directly on it the parts you’re working on.

wire formed to a fairy wing design on poster board — Cut the next section of wire with a little bit extra on each end.

This does break up the smooth lines in the wings, but I didn’t find it to be a problem. However, if you want your wings to have extra smooth lines, then instead of curling the wire to attach it, you could tape secure it using electrical tape in the same color as your wire. I didn’t have any brown electrical tape, so I didn’t try this method, but I think it’d work well.

Continue adding sections of wire until you’ve completed one wing.

Now do it all again! We want two wings, after all. 😉

Get more great DIY tutorials and yummy recipes sent straight to your inbox each week (no spamming, I promise) by inputting your email below! You’ll get a free week-long meal plan, too. 😉

Attach the Two Wings Together

To attach your two fairy wings together, bend a portion of your stronger wire (or old hanger) unto a U shape with a few inches extra on each side.

wire shaped like an M — As you can see, I used the same 12 gauge aluminum wire for this part– it worked ok, but using a stronger wire would’ve been MUCH better! You live, you learn.

So I suppose it ends up looking more like a funky M than a U, haha. Curl the extra wire on the sides of your U around the base of each fairy wing. The U part in the middle will slide into the back of the dress to hold the wings in place while wearing them.

wire pieces curled around each other — Since I didn’t use a stronger wire, I took an extra piece of wire and used it to hold the top part of my U together. If you’re using stronger wire, that shouldn’t be necessary, though.

*A note on the size of the U insert: I made these wings for my young daughters, so my U (and wings) are smaller. If you’re making these for an adult or teenager, you may want to make the U insert bigger and deeper so it can better support larger wings.

And admire your awesome work so far! I honestly think you could stop right here and have some awesome wings for a steampunk fairy costume! Don’t you think?

Now for adding the cellophane!

Cut out two pieces of cellophane that are large enough to cover one wing.

Lay one of those pieces down, trying to keep it all flat. Spray on a layer of your spray adhesive.

piece of iridescent cellophane sprayed with spray adhesive

Put one of the wire wing frames on top of the now sticky cellophane and gently press it down. Lightly add another layer of spray adhesive.

Now carefully place the other piece of cellophane on top, like a cellophane and wire sandwich. Press all the layers together as well as you can.

wire fairy wing frame between two layers of iridescent cellophane

Trim off the excess cellophane, leaving about a quarter-inch of it around the edges.

wire fairy wings between two layers of cellophane that have been trimmed to the same size and shape of the wings

Repeat with the other side.

Heat it up!

Heating the wings accomplishes two things: it helps bind everything together really well, and it makes the cellophane take on a more “magical” look. I’ll show you two methods to heat the fairy wings below.

Using a Heat Gun

To heat the fairy wings with a heat gun, just hold the heat gun about 5—8 inches away from the wings and, with the heat gun on, carefully guide it over all parts of the wings. Try to move somewhat quickly – if you stay even a split second too long in one place, the heat may start to melt a hole in the cellophane. If this happens, don’t stress about it – as long as the hole isn’t huge, it likely won’t detract from the look of your wings.

I did have a few small holes pop up in my wings, but they only went through the first layer of cellophane and you honestly don’t even notice them without looking for them. And I’m just going to go with the idea that it makes them look more organic anyway. 😉

Using an Iron

You can also heat the fairy wings using an iron and two tea towels. Simply lay one tea towel on your ironing board, set down the fairy wings, and cover them with the other tea towel. Then set your iron to the lowest setting and iron the wings in small sections for about 5—10 seconds each until you’ve ironed all of the wings.

Which heating method is better?

I couldn’t find any comparisons when I was researching how to make cellophane fairy wings, so I decided to make wings using both heating methods and do my own comparison!

diy cellophane fairy wings made with a heat gun compared to using an iron — The different color is just because of the angle I took the picture from. What you want to look at is the difference in texture.

They’re both fairly similar. The heat gun was faster and created more of a beveled, shimmery/ sparkly effect, which I really like.

But I was honestly surprised at how well the ironing method worked, too! It created more of a smooth and only slightly shimmery effect, which I think looked nice, too. The only thing I didn’t really like about the ironing method’s results was that the edges of the cellophane stayed extra neat and straight. Not that that’s a huge deal, but I felt like it detracted from the realistic look I was going for.

And that’s it!! Now you have some gorgeous, one-of-a-kind, realistic fairy wings of your own!

Now put them on and go take some pictures!

little girl dressed as a fairy handing something to another girl dressed in diy fairy wings — One of my daughters is handing a piece of “bacon” (tree bark) to my other daughter who has committed herself to her role as a fairy and just declared that this is the “home tree!” (I’m guessing that’s a thing in Tinkerbell, maybe? I don’t even know, haha!)

two little girls dressed up in diy fairy wings

I’m not a photographer (though I’d love to learn photography someday), but I still had a lot of fun taking my kids out for a fairy photoshoot!

If anyone’s interested, I got the dresses and flower crowns for my girls from Amazon. 😊