Instant Noodles: Post-Apocalyptic Angel Wings

Today is October 1st, and you know what that means! It's time to start thinking about Halloween. This entire month, my how-to posts will focus on distressing, blood, and everything downright creepy.

Day One: Post-Apocalyptic Angel Wings

Angels don’t always look all pure and pretty, as everyone knows. But if you’re bored with simply trading out the white feathers for black, try this.

Cut out your feathers from newspaper. That’s right: newspaper. Use sections with a lot of text, because nothing ruins the effect like having Garfield on your wings. Crumple each feather and then flatten, and then coat liberally with craft polyurethane, like the kind you would use as a final protective coat on a sword. Here’s one of the few cases where it’s better to use the polyurethane that turns yellow when it dries. Allow the polyurethane to drink completely, and then use these feathers when making your angel wings.

What the polyurethane does with the newspaper is that it both yellows the newspaper to look like it’s been aged, gives it a creepy oily sort of sheen, and it makes it slightly transparent so that you can halfway see both sides of the print. Because this makes the paper brittle, I don’t recommend stapling down or stitching them to the wing structure. This is one instance where glue works just fine.