I'm sure you guys have seen homemade dragonflies with incredible wings online before. And if you're reading this, you're probably wondering how they did it. I know that was the case for me.
So, I did some research to find a fun and creative way to make pretty “bug” wings. And I saw that one way it could be done is by using wire and liquid polymer clay. I was excited because I happened to have some liquid Sculpey, but hadn't used it yet.
Well, not any more baby.
Allow me to show you how I made this neat dragonfly that I ended up turning into a magnet. It's super fun and is not as hard as one might think.
Aren't those cool wings?
regular white polymer clay
magnet button
superglue
Step 1
Cut four 4 or 5 inches (ca. 13 cm) of the craft wire (it can be any color you want or have.)
Step 2
Bend the wires in half, making a long U shape.
Step 3
Using round-nosed jewelry pliers, bend the middle of the U shape in, making a lopsided W, like in the picture below.
I did this doing two wires at a time so that the wings would end up more even. You want to do 4 altogether.
Step 4
Twist the end wires together, making a wing shape.
Step 5
Lay your wire wing flat against a silicone mat and start squeezing the liquid polymer clay inside the wing going from one side of the wire to the other side, back and forth. It's ok if some spills out. We'll fix it later.
Do this to all four wings.
Step 6
Leave the wings on the silicone mat and bake per instructions of the liquid polymer clay.
Please excuse my dirty oven :)
Step 6
Remove from the oven.
Your wings should look something like this:
Isn't that neat?
Step 7
Trim away any of the liquid clay that might have spilled over.
Step 8
Use an eyedropper to add Pebeo Prisme Fantasy paints to your wing.
If you don't have this particular paint, water down metallic paint, just a bit, and use the eyedropper to apply it. It won't swirl together, quite like the Pebeo, but it will still be cool.
Here's my wing with three of the Pebeo paints added:
Paint all four wings and let dry.
Step 9
Now it's time to start making our dragonfly body using regular polymer clay. Their bodies have three sections to them.
Make the first by rolling a long cylindrical shape.
Step 10
For the middle section, roll a ball and push it a little flat with your thumb.
Step 11
Using more of the liquid Sculpey as glue, add a drop to the end of the middle section.
Step 13
Hold the middle section and long tail section together to attach them.
Step 14
Make a head and two protruding eyes and glue them in place with the liquid clay.
Step 15
Now, grab your wings and untwist the ends as much as you can without disturbing the actual wing.
Step 16
Trim one of the wires so that there is only one wire extending from the wing.
Do that with all the wings.
Step 17
While the clay is still wet, poke the one wire from the wing into the clay where you want the wing to be. You're making a spot to glue the wire in later.
Do this with all four wings.
Step 18
Snip off two pieces of an inch or so of unused wire and curl the ends for the antenna.
Step 19
You can choose to bake the dragonfly with or without the antennas in. I did bake it with the antennas in.
Step 20
Bake your dragonfly without the wings (make sure you have holes for them, tho.)
Step 21
Add or dip the wings wire in superglue or another strong clear adhesive.
Step 22
Insert the wings into the holes you made before baking.
Step 23
Paint the dragonfly body with metallic paints.
Using multiple colors of metallic paint looks cool.
I painted the eyes a metallic black with a little turquoise, and it turned out pretty awesome.
Last step
Add some glue and a magnet button to the back — or front, rather.
And now you have a delightful addition to your refrigerator or a maybe a gift to a dragonfly lover you know.
I put my dragonfly magnet on my front door:
I know that was a lot of instructions, but I'm sure you'll find most of them pretty intuitive. And none of the steps are especially difficult, so please give this project a try and tell me how it goes.
