Although angels are around us all the time, Christmas is a good time to remember them and to make them a part of our decoration and gifts as a reminder to be good, helping and loving people…
Today I am sharing a project I have been postponing for weeks. Most of us believe angels are all dressed in white (or black, if we rely on popular movies), but I prefer them in colourful clothes and even with colourful wings.
In the instructions below you will see my steps for making a Christmas angel. If you like the idea, you can follow the steps and create your own. If you don’t have time to draw everything yourself you can visit my blog shop for the printable templates.
Templates and materials
First, I created 4 different “dresses” – 2 bigger and 2 smaller and 2 pairs of matching sleeves. Also – the Angel’s hair, which I decided to also have in two variations – light and dark.
To match the sleeves and because it is winter, I drew small gloves, also in two pairs. And – of course – the wings.
Also added two backgrounds, because somehow, I don’t like the white areas inside the colourful paper structures. Of course, the hair also needed their backgrounds and the project become very colourful. With this I can make lots of angels “dressed” in different ways only by mixing the different parts of their clothes and hair.
If you decide to create an angel like this, following my instructions, you will also need a Styrofoam ball for the Angel’s head. If you prefer to print my templates on A4 paper, the ball has to be about 3cm diameter and if you print them on A3 – about 6cm diameter.
You will also need PVA glue, scissors and a wooden stick (or you can use a brush handle).
Making the Angel’s dress
I printed the templates on two different types of paper and suggest you do likewise. The body – on 200 g paper and the hair – on simple 80 g copy paper. This is because the hair will have at least 6 layers and the thicker paper will make the process of sculpting it difficult. And the hair will also become very heavy.
First, I made the cones of the two dresses – the smaller and the larger. My secret to making cones like this with thicker paper is to fold the gluing area and then to start connecting both sides of the design from the bottom (wider) side.
Then I simply press and hold the folded gluing area – for me it is very important to glue it together well and make a secure construction so it doesn’t tear apart in the future. The edge is almost invisible on the back side of the angel and you can also smooth it with your fingers to hide it more. You just need to press from both sides – inside and outside – at the same time.
As I said above, you can mix the two cones and create different designs.
The Angel’s arms
I didn’t want all of the sleeves to be flat, so I glued them together only at the top leaving the lower part open. This leaves the flat areas only at the top to make them easy to glue on the dress later.
The next step was to connect the “lace” on the end of the sleeves only to the top part. The other two I left open. I liked the idea of seeing the colour of the background inside especially if the blue sleeves are printed with a red background or the red ones with blue.
Then I attached the gloves by gluing them inside the sleeves.
My last step here was to glue both sleeves close to the top of the dress-cone.
Angel’s hair
To make the messy hair of a just-landed Angel, I decided to work on different layers each of which is curled with scissors (for more open curls)
… and the wooden stick (for tighter curls).
Then I glued them together as shown in the photo below: the long pieces in the centre and the shorter ones on the top and underneath.
Then I pressed just the edge of the “hair” to make my Angel’s hairstyle nicer.
The next step was to put glue inside…
… and to glue around the Styrofoam ball.
Final steps and completing the paper Christmas Angel decoration
The final steps were also very simple. First, I made a hole in the end of the “hair” line and filled it with PVA glue.
Then stuck the top of the “dress” cone into the hole.
And the last step was to attach the wings to the back of the figure.
And the angel was ready!
Later, so my angel wouldn’t be lonely, I made another one – with dark hair. And I hope I will have time before Christmas to explore all the variations which the templates offer…
Merry Christmas!
And Merry magical season, no matter if you celebrate Christmas or not, we all need a place for at least one angel in our lives and souls!
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