DIY Monarch Butterfly Wings

While I’m using this week’s tutorial on polymer clay, I would definitely say this is more of a painting tutorial than anything else. You could use this tutorial to paint the pattern wherever you deemed fit, but I will be showing you how I made the monarch butterfly wings for my monarch butterfly dragon from last month!

Supplies:

• Orange polymer clay
• A roller or pasta machine
• A small ball point tool (optional)
• An exacto knife

 

• The base you’ll be painting
• Reference photos of monarch butterflies (shown below in the actual post)
• Pencil/eraser if you’re using a base that can be drawn and erased
• Black and white acrylic paint. If your base isn’t orange, you’ll need orange as well.
• The tiniest paint brush you can find. If you’re good at painting with a ball point or needle tool, or toothpick, feel free to use those too.
• A container with water (not shown)

If you already have your base, skip to step 2.

Step 1: Create your polymer clay base

If you’re looking to create polymer clay wings, you’ll first want to roll out your polymer clay to your desired thickness. I made mine a little on the thicker side so they would be more durable; I would say they were roughly 1/8″ thick (probably a touch thinner).

Reference photos of monarch butterflies were very helpful when it came to tracing out the generic shape of one set of wings (the upper and lower shapes). I used a small ball point tool to lay down the rough outline. When I was happy with the shape, I cut it out of the clay.

I used the first set to trace out a second set so they would be somewhat symmetrical. Then I smoothed the edges of the clay with my fingers.

Bake your wings according to your package’s instructions. While you can paint on unbaked clay, if you need the next step like I do, you’ll want the clay to be hard. You also won’t have to worry about messing up the shape of your wings either!

Step 2: Plan out the lines (optional)

If you are the kind of person who can completely freehand with little effort/very few mistakes, 1) I’m pretty jealous, and 2) feel free to skip to the next step! If you’re like me, however, you may need some help with figuring out where you want to paint your lines. While the wing pattern on the monarch butterfly is fairly straight forward, reference photos are a must unless you end up painting these so many times you have the pattern memorized! Here are some that I used while I was tracing and painting the wings:

These are the two areas to think about when sketching out the lines. I’ve surrounded them with outlines in the below photo for easy reference. If you take the lines within these shapes and tackle them in chunks, it makes the pattern easier to handle.

A regular pencil helped me get an idea of where I wanted to paint. It erases fairly easily on polymer clay, but I recommend making light marks. Otherwise, you may see leftover pencil marks, especially if you’re working on a lighter color of clay.

Note: In my video, I started with the pencil lines, and then I erased it, went back, and painted the black outline around the whole wing first instead, thickening the borders as I went. This helped give me a better idea of where my sections needed to fall. It was after this that I went back in and drew the pencil lines. You can work step 2 and 3 in the order that works best for you!

Step 3: Let the painting begin!

It’s now time to paint in black around the wing and over your outlines.

Let the paint dry completely before moving to the next step.

Step 4: Add the white dots

I used a dotting tool and various amounts of pressure to create different sizes of white dots. These are placed on the thick outside edge of the wings, placed on top of the black paint. You’ll end up with something like this:

Let that paint dry completely.

Step 5: Glaze your wings