The School Down the Lane

I know you have all been waiting for it with baited breath, and here it is! A Dennis update!

This time he had his eyes done K and I attached 10mm, opalescent sequins with (lots of) school glue to mimic the multi lens eyes of real dragonflies.

He also got a wing lift. K and I could see that over time the duct tape just wasn’t cutting it. Dennis developed a rather severe droop! So we addressed that issue by balling up some newsprint and sticking it under his wings right where they join his body. Then we took strips of newsprint through some more glue and made him a wing harness. Hopefully that will do the trick!

Overall I think he’s looking really good!

He’s nearly done now! All that’s left to do is attach his legs (which are already constructed out of several peices of 18 gauge wire twisted together) and touch up his paint job. I’m hoping to have him at the library by the end of next week!

UPDATE!  Dennis is complete!  W took a break from working on the car to drill the holes for Dennis’ legs and then K and I attached them
and drew him a little smile! Here he is complete:

Click here if you want to see Dennis’ humble beginnings or here to see how he got his wings.

This weekend we finally made it to the craft supply store and picked out paper and wire to make Dennis’s wings.  K and chose 18 gauge copper wire and pewter colored scrapbook paper.  Here’s how it looked in our kitchen as we began our latest phase of this project.

At first we tried to glue the paper to the wire wing form, but we found it was very difficult to get it to stay put long enough for the glue to dry and it also crinkled the paper.

In the end we taped the paper onto the wire.  You can see the tape, but you could see the glue too and the wings look neater overall I think.  Once the wings were finished, W drilled holes for us to insert the wings into Dennis’s back.  It worked well, but we needed to stabilize them a bit because they tended to spin a bit.  I used a strip of silver duct tape along the area the wings attached.  This also served to cover up the mess we made while getting the wire into the hole.  K then painted over the duct tape with blue paint.

A winged Dennis                                      A close up after the paint touch up

Want to see previous Dennis posts and pictures?  Click here! Or click hereto see him get eyes.