The Pinups of Betsy VanDeusen

My friend Jen turned me on to “Jewel Beetle Wings” as a potential jewelry-making material a few years back… and I decided it was time to finally see what I could do with ‘em. 

So, I ordered myself 200 wings from Thailand. When they arrived, I spent an hour or so drilling a hole in each one. Once I had that done, I got to thinking… I’ve been doing a lot of gold-leafing lately, and while the “outsides” of these wings are a beautiful, magical, iridescent blue-green, the “insides” are really pretty blah. So I pulled out my gold leafing tools, and got to work. I lined up the wings on rows of double-stick-tape, gave ‘em a good coating of spray adhesive, and applied the leaf. While certainly a time consuming process, I think it makes something beautiful even more special. I want to give them a coat of varnish before I use them in jewelry, but that’ll have to be a project for another day. 

Here’s a little more info about Jewel Beetle Wings, from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetlewing

And here’s a little Pinterest Board I started working on this morning:

Beetlewing Jewelry

:-)

Night night!