HOW TO: wings and devil dress

Suomenkielinen versio löytyy täältä: siivet ja paholaisen mekko

This year (because of the moving) we didn't want to use extra cash to make our Halloween costumes, but as most of the people, we still wanted to celebrate.
As usual, we were really late with our costumes, so DIY was kind of the only option.
After browsing tens and tens eri costumes from the interenet, I decided to do "quick and easy" wings (= took a lot of nerves and were hard to do).

 

So, our costumes builded up around these wings. As I like to dress up in a way that people know we are together, I tought both of our costumes should be from the same theme.

Miro were Arch angel (as I 'see' them), and I was fallen angel.

For your diy wings you need:
- cardboard, which is big enough
- leather or other farbric / material you would like to use to make feathers
- leatherstraps/belts ect. which you will use for hand loops
- hot glue gun
- possibly black marker
- stapler

I used shooting target as my base. I drew other half free hand, and traced other half to get exaclty same sized wings. As we wanted to do really massive wings, I cut this out of each other and made a extension piece in between so that these would settle to right position when used. I could have done this with cardboard, in position as it is shown in picture, but imagine cardboard piece in between these two wings.

I cutted a piece of leather, glued and stapled it to between wings. At this point I also needed to find places to straps. As you don't need to repeat my errors, here's couple tips:
Ensure, that your straps are long enough and strong enough for this purpose. These wings are going to be really heavy. Staple them really well, I mean, use like tons of staples to be sure.
Don't use rubberband unless it's REALLY for heavy purpose, as in other case it wont last there without stretching our of shape.

Cut feathers from your material (I used leather) using a stencil. If I had to guess, I would say I used about 100-150 feathers for each section, but these really are big wings. I used 4 differend sizes so it would look as real as it can.
Glue feathers to base.

Do this to all these sections. Shake wings to see if any feathers fall (suprisingly many fell of as I hadn't glued them). As for positions, I can't say more than find the way that suits you better. I used real wing photos to be my guide lines.

You can paint your base to be black before you start, or you can use permanent marker afterwards to cover any parts of the base that is showing (I did this).
Lastly, sew buckles to upper leather straps, so you can tighten wings to be in the right position when wearing. Make holes to lowes leather straps, just like belts have.

Tutorial for dress is coming afterwards, but to cover your disapointment for that, you can look this handsom Arch angel:

Ask if there is something you would like to know, that I didn't tell! These took a lot of time, but you wont need to as you can avoid all the mistakes I did! :)