Create your own sequins tutorial/Wing process video

Materials List

Basic tools:
Small hole punch (I got mine at Michaels, but look in craft stores that sell scrapbooking supplies)
Scissors

Materials:
Sheets of acrylic/acetate (I get mine at Curry’s Art Store, but here, here and here are some online sources)

Additional materials specific to the wing process:
Embroidery hoop
Embroidery floss or thread, needle, snips
Black fine-tip ink pen
Scotch tape
Notebook
Acrylic paint
Fine tipped paint brush

 

Transcript (more or less) of video:

We’re going to look at the basics needed for creating your own sequins today. It’s actually much easier than you might think. The three main components are: acrylic/acetate sheets, a tiny hole punch, and scissors. I got this hole punch at Michaels. You can likely find them at any craft store that has a scrapbooking section. After that, the sequin world is your oyster. Here is my Aziraphale wing, and I’m working on a Crowley companion piece. (Yes, I am very much still on my Good Omens bullshit. Not even sorry.)

 

I was lucky enough to live down the street from Active Surplus on Queen before it closed, and they had boxes of old celluloid gels for a dollar each. I freaked out and bought as many of them as I could afford (I was much, much poorer back then). I turned these into the dragon scale sequins for the Vessel gown, as well as the mermaid scales of a green dress I made for an editorial. I’ve included a few links to places you can buy coloured acetate sheets, but these days I’ve been exclusively using clear sheets and painting them the way I’d like – as seen here. I got these sheets from Curry’s Art Supplies, and you can likely get them at lots of different art shops. Michaels sometimes has them in their scrapbooking section, and sometimes in colours or prints and patterns. Gotta keep your eye out. 

 

For today’s tutorial, putting together the sequins for my Crowley and Aziraphale wings, I used clear acetate. For Aziraphale’s wing, I was extremely fussy in the process – I printed out this image of a swan wing – what they said they based the wings of Crowley and Aziraphale on in the show – and embroidered it onto my frame. 

 

From there, I traced out the shape of the feathers, and them numbered them. And then painstakingly traced each one out on the acetate.  I taped each one with the corresponding number on to my notebook. Once they were all taped in place, I handpainted each one, based on the feathers in the swan photo. 

 

Once they were dry, I carefully punched two sequin holes in the bigger feathers and began to stitch them on one by one, using my map and numbering system. The smaller feathers only had space for one hold punch, so I was creative with my stitching to make sure they stayed in place and didn’t swing around too much. I worked my way through the wing tier by tier, but towards the end, I realized I needed a lot more feathers than I’d made, despite my careful numbering. This is when it seemed to me that I might not need to be quite so painstaking in the process. I did not trace any feathers for my Crowley wing – I just made a LOT of them, in different sizes. I will embroider the same wing image mirrored for the black one, but I will use my more generic feathers to fill out the wing. A big plus – there was a LOT less waste with this method. Something that is important to me, since sequins aren’t the most environmentally friendly medium to be using.

 

This is how I created my wings!

I would absolutely love to hear if any of you try the methods I’ve outlined here. If you post your work to insta, you can hashtag it #beadedweirdness, but regardless of whether you post it or not, I’d love to see.