Butterfly wings
 

Does anyone know of a tutorial or have any tips on how to make a butterfly wing? Do you start with a leaf shape and go from there? Just want to make a pair of earrings. Like this that's pictured but in glass not polymer. Did a search here but really didn't find much. TIA

Or you could do like I think Margaret Zinser does and make the basic shape and indentations and then use glass paint to make your colors, then fire again.

Hmm, I've never heard of glass paints. Sounds interesting. Just checked out Margaret Zinser's butterflies.
Very pretty.

I have a wing tutorial here: http://bluhealer.blogspot.com/2016/1...-tutorial.html

Thank you so much for the tutorial. Looks great!

Thank you for the wing tutorial. Looks great and, importantly, looks achievable.

Georgia

Nice. Thankyou for sharing this tutorial

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Beautiful, love your work and very generous to share. :love:

Kat, there is a pretty simple way to do it with sheet glass with fusing techniques.

The easiest is to take a piece of 3mm dichro color on black (flat, with no texture), cut the wing shape. Make a drawing of the wing to determine the colored areas and black "veins". The drawing should be same size as the finished piece will be.

The "spots" (areas where color will stay) are to be traced to some kind of glue tape or plastic, cut and glued on the wing with some spaces between spots. The covered areas will not be affected in the next step.

Apply the etching cream to the piece - this chemical will remove dichro coating on the areas not covered with tape. This approach is shown very well in a video by Tanya Veit. Time is experimental but it does not take too long, The aim is just to remove the coating.

Alternatively you can draw right on the colored side of the glass and carefully scratch away the dichro coating with Dremel tool or similar with a small diamond bit (glasses and a dust mask are a must).

When the piece is rinsed, you have a wing with the colored spots and veins. You can put it in the kiln and add murrini or colored dots on top (small cuts of stringer or thin rod) and tack fuse in the kiln - decorations will round up and fuse to the glass, edges will round as well, scratched areas will become glossy again. If you wish, you can drill holes before firing or glue a bail afterwards and you have the wing.