Make an Angel Christmas Ornament

You can make an angel Christmas ornament that will last for years with supplies as close as your cupboards. Just get out the pasta and start creating.

In the space of one afternoon, it's easy to make dozens of angel ornaments. Use them to enhance your Christmas tree, or turn them into the perfect gift for that person on your list who has everything. All you need to create these delicately stunning angels is a little bit of time.

Begin with a clean countertop and two foil cookie sheets. Keep all of your supplies in one cookie sheet and work on the other one.

Materials:

• 2 cookie sheets
• Glue
• Uncooked rigatoni noodles for the body
• Uncooked bowtie pasta for the wings
• Uncooked elbows for the arms
• Gold pipe cleaners for the halos
• Wooden beads for the heads
• Uncooked rice, gold thread or yarn for the hair
• Uncooked alphabet pasta to personalize each angel
• Large metal Christmas ornament hooks
• Glue

Tips
Because it can take the glue a long time to dry, this project can become very tedious for little children. However, if children are not helping, you can always use hot glue, which sets much faster. It's also best to do this in assembly line fashion. Glue the arms on a dozen angels, then go back to the first angel and begin gluing on the wings, etc.

When you glue the elbows or arms on the rigatoni, make sure they are on the upper half of the rigatoni and that they are evenly spaced across from one another. You can either glue them sideways, as if the arms are reaching forward, or you can glue them up and down as if the angel has her hands on her hips. Either way works well.

The wings should be glued on just above the spot where the top of the arm meets the body. If you plan on personalizing the angels, a good time to sort through the alphabet letters is while the glue is drying.

When you make the head of the angel, use a wooden bead that has a hole through it. Add a face with a magic marker and glue on strands of gold thread or yarn as hair. When you have completed the face and hair, open the package of Christmas ornament hooks. Press open the small hook on the bottom and straighten the wire on that end. Insert the wire through the top of the bead and push it all the way through to the other side. Bend the wire at the bottom so that the bead cannot fall off. To secure the bead so that it does not flop back and forth on the wire, add glue to the bottom wire, dabbing a little into the hole to hold it securely.

Use the alphabet letters to write a name and then glue it onto the angel's body, either on the back, along the bottom or down the front. Finally, glue the head to the body.

Variations

• Use bits of lace for the wings
• Glue elbows upside down on the bottom of the rigatoni as feet
• Glue rice to the beads for hair instead of thread or yarn
• Use felt bits to create books that the angels can hold
• For colored angels, cook the individual pastas with food coloring in the water. When done, separate the pasta and allow them it to dry. You can also dye the alphabet pasta in this manner so the name stands out.