Stained Glass Look Butterfly Crown Made From Recycled Plastic

I just love butterflies! They are so fun and colorful!

The secret to this project is glass paint and relief paint. Combined, they create a beautiful stained glass effect on recycled plastic.

Look for some (used) plastic packaging material that is made of flat, clean, transparent sheets. This is the perfect surface for painting the butterflies.

Other materials:

for the butterflies:

1. glass paint. I used a brand called 'decorfin' from Talens in the following colors: 200 yellow, 300 red, 500 blue, 501 light blue, 536 violet, 600 green and 620 olive green
2. black relief paint (also called 'liner'). I used 693 black by Arte deco / Vallejo
3. cotton swabs (to correct mistakes)
4. small paintbrush
5. paper
6. pencil
7. black pen
8. tape
9. small scissors

for the crown:

1. hairband
2. colored metal wire (the flexible kind) or aluminium wire
3. tools to cut and shape the wire
4. super glue (gel)
5. toothpicks
6. baking soda
7. paintbrush (to remove baking soda dust)

If you're a talented artist, you can offcourse draw your own butterflies. If not, search google or Wikimedia Commons for drawings of butterflies.

When you have found a picture that you like, either print it or trace the image by placing a sheet of paper over your phone or tablet screen. I used this picture for the big butterflies and this one for the outline of the small butterflies.

To make the drawing more visible when painting it in step 2, use a black pen to make the lines darker.

Make sure the plastic sheet you paint on is clean, flat and without folds* or scratches.

Place your butterfly drawing under your sheet and secure it with some tape. Then start with the first color. Paint with a very small, tiny brush. Glass paint dries quite quickly into a gel-like substance, so try to paint your butterfly in under 2/3 minutes. A thick layer will give you the best effect, but also takes a long time to fully dry. With good quality paint, your brushstrokes should fade as the paint dries.

If you want to use several colors in 1 butterfly, you will have to wait for the paint to dry between switching the colors. This can take a couple of hours. I noticed that when I paint 2 colors on top of each other (i.e. yellow+red=orange in the picture) the paint creates a beautiful fingerprint-like structure in the colors.

When the paint is fully dry (I waited at least a day) you can start painting on top of the lines with the black relief paint. It may take some practice to draw thin lines, so take your time. For the 'body' of the butterfly I used a very thick line of this paint, and added a big 'blob' for the 'head'. Be aware that this also takes a long time to fully dry.

If you make any mistakes, use a cotton swab or some tissue paper to wipe away the wet paint (this only works during the first minute or two, so be quick).

*If you don't have enough material, you can draw the butterfly on a fold, as long as the 'body' of the butterfly is right on top of the fold.

Wait at least a day to make sure your paint has completely dried. Use a toothpick to test if the 'body' of the butterfly is solid.

Then carefully cut out the butterflies. I used some small, slightly curved scissors for this step. Cut as close to the black 'lead' outline of the butterfly as possible. If you painted the black outlines a bit too thick in the previous step, you could also cut into the line to make it a bit slimmer, as shown in the picture with the green butterfly.

After cutting, you can lightly fold the butterflies into shape. Fold them along the line of the 'body' of the butterfly. Make sure the wings do not touch each other, this could damage the color on the wings.

Look at the super cute butterflies you've just created! Think of all the many possibilities to use them... After some thought I chose to use them to make two butterfly crowns.

For the first crown I used a simple plastic hairband I found at the Dutch dollar store (Sow Low). I glued the butterflies to the hairband with Super Glue. Use a super glue gel, which is a lot less messy and sticks better than liquid super glue.

To make some of the butterflies 'fly' around the crown I glued a few threads of colored metal wire (thick and flexible) to the hairband. Since this wire is quite difficult to glue, I added a pinch of baking soda to the glue. This creates a stronger bond. It does look a little bit messy, thereforeI only used it on the bottom of the hairband, so it's not visible when you wear it. If the baking soda sticks to the wings of your butterflies, use a paintbrush to dust it off.

When your glue is dry, you can cut the wires to size and adjust or 'sculpt' them in a way that looks good.

tip: if your butterflies don't stick to the hairband or the wires, use some sandpaper to roughen up the surfaces before applying the glue.

note: I also tried to use hot glue, which made the butterflies stick a lot easier. However, they would easily break off when wearing the crown... perhaps a better brand of hot glue might work (i used a cheap brand), but for me superglue created the best long term bond.

The next crown I made myself out of purple and blue colored Iron wire. I attached the wire to a door hook (my door hook looks like a deer) and twisted the wires around each other to create a frame. The frame needs to be a little bit shorter than the circumference of your head. At both ends of the frame I made 2 small hoops and used a ribbon to connect them as shown in the pictures. This way, the crown will fit any headshape.

Then I added some shorter pieces of wire (silver) to the frame, by simply twisting them around the frame. This created a crown with 'spikes'.

Then, just like in the first version, I simply glued the butterflies to both the frame and the 'spikes' and bent them into place.

And now all you need to do is wear your butterfly crown and feel like a fairy princess!