DIY Bat Wing Necklace

Last week I decided to make a bat wings necklace to go with this amazing Halloween dress that I bought last month. I made the necklace using shrink film. I bought this shrink film (for a prior project) because it was cheaper than Shrinky Dinks. I already owned the jump rings, and I used a necklace chain I had rather than buying a roll of chain.



The first thing I did was Google image search "bat wings outline." This is the design I liked best (I could not find the original source to link to). I rounded the inside of the wings using image editing software.

I then printed two copies of the wings (one of which was mirrored/flipped) on card stock. I did this for two reasons: 1) To confirm I liked the scale, and 2) So I could determine where I needed to attach the necklace chain to get the wings at the angle I wanted. This is the wing angle I liked as it mirrors the neckline of the dress:



As you can see, attaching the chain at different places has a significant impact on the angle of the wings:




I then printed two copies of the wings filled in with black ink on shrink film (again, with one wing mirrored/flipped). The shrink film I was working with shrinks about 50% after baking; I wanted my finished wings to be about four inches long, so, I printed eight inch wings. (I printed other projects on the same sheet.)

Printing was the hardest part of the whole task because a lot of printers don't like shrink film. I ended up having to tape my shrink film sheet to a sheet of regular paper; this is risky because it could create quite the paper jam.



After the ink dried on the shrink film, I cut out the wings, and used a paper punch to create the holes (this must be done before baking!). Here are the wings on parchment paper on a baking sheet ready to go in the oven:



This is what they looked like after baking according to the directions on the shrink film:



I then used some jump rings to join the wings, and to attach a necklace chain: