Kid Friendly Version of "Punched Tin" Dragonfly (and Butterfly)

Ever since posting my tutorial for making punched tin butterflies a few years back, and more recently punched tin dragonfly wings, I have been thinking about a way to make "punched tin" more child friendly and less likely to cut little fingers.

And one day, while I was sipping my morning coffee and admiring all my shiny golden folded paper stars (I keep them up all year) the answered jumped right out at me! Card weight shiny silver paper!

The paper I used - "Recollections" - is found at Michael's Stores in the scrap-booking section and is available in 65 lb. card weight paper stock. One sheet will make a LOT of wings! (Or you can save the leftovers for a very sweet little project I am sharing during the Winter Holidays.)

Very pleased with the results, I immediately created a kid friendly version of my punched tin ornament size dragonflies using card weight silver paper and plastic beads. These little guys are about 3 1/2" long.

I made the originals at least ten years ago - and BTW the wings are actually tin!

"Punched Tin Butterflies" also can be made kid friendly just by replacing the aluminum wings with silver paper wings.

The "how-to" below is presented in two parts: "How to Make Punched Paper Wings" and a picture only tutorial "How to Create a Bead Body". (The text version of making a bead body appears here on the previous "dragonfly" post.

How to Make Punched Paper Wings.

All you need to make the wings is silver coated card stock, scissors, pencil, dragonfly wing pattern and a push pin! Aleene's Jewel-it works great for glueing the wings to the body.

1. Trace a dragon fly wing pattern onto the back of the silver paper. You will need two wings. If you are lacking inspiration, just google dragonfly!

2. Cut out the wings.

Note: Donna gave me the idea of using a push pin. But I also wanted to try out a nail.

As you can see above, the push pin was much easier to control and made a much nicer hole.

I did learn that it is best when "punching" to use careful, deliberate pressure to achieve fairly consistent holes. The right side of the top edge looks much more even than the left side where I began testing.

3. Punch a design into the wings. I like to punch holes along the edge and then fill in with a design. For paper wings - especially with children, simple is better. You can see in the images at the beginning of this post that I have simplified the punched design considerably on the paper wing.

Note:  Your design can be drawn onto the paper surface with a pencil.  Make your lines as light as possible so they can be removed with an eraser.

4. Construct a body following the tutorial here and the images below. Instead of using wire to attach the wings, it is best to simply glue the wings to the body.

5. Before glueing, cut a piece of wire about 5" in length and slip it between the forth and fifth beads (counting from the head). Twist a couple times to hold in place.

6. Once the body has been constructed, position the wings on a piece of cardboard and tape to secure. (I use masking tape,) Slip a piece of waxed paper between the wings and the cardboard to prevent the wings being glued to the cardboard!

7. Place a "healthy" drop of glue on the center of each wing, and holding the wires you just placed between the 4th and 5th beads out of the way, place the beaded body into the glue. Let set overnight.

How to Create A Beaded Body

Note: You will find the written text for how to make a beaded body right here. You will want to refer to it for bead and wire sizes.

Those totally gorgeous Gypsy Trade beads are found here at Elysian Studios Shop. Erin sells them in so many pretty colors you will no doubt have as much trouble as I do making a selection.

So now without any more words - the picture how to for creating a beaded dragonfly body!

 As is always the case, I welcome your e-mails or comments if you need help or have a question.