Twelve Days of Christmas 2016 - Day Eight

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree" Roy L.Smith I learned this from my mother and I firmly believe it. She practiced charity every day of her life. I used to watch, and help when I got older, as she spent hours and hours lovingly making items for the bazaar at church every November or December. She worked all year long so there would be enough items to sell to help with the church budget for the following year. Then we did things like leaving a Christmas tree on a friend's doorstep, ringing the doorbell and hiding as fast as we could! All the things she taught me are what makes Christmas so special for me.

This is our little tiny tree in our motor home.

This last weekend was the Festival of Trees here in Logandale at the historic old school building. There were locals selling candies and cookies and breads. There was an older man selling handmade wooden toys, ladies selling candles, and others selling handmade gift items. It's a fund raiser for the old school and it gets a lot of traffic. Any one who wants can decorate a tree to be auctioned off to help keep the old school up and running. And whenever I'm here, I always do a tree in memory of Madison. (If you haven't watched the video of Madison, its above, on the tab called Madison) She died of cancer when she was 2 years old. This year, we made paper angels to put on the tree, along with silver ribbon and little white doves.

So, day 8 is paper angels, with a peek at some of the beautiful trees that were there. The paper angels are all over Pinterest. They are made of sheet music and I absolutely adore them!  But I didn't have access to music on paper that was sturdy enough. I know, I know, they make scrapbooking cardstock with music on it, but I was on a very limited budget because it was right before payday, so I used what I had. I did buy just a few sheets to give more of a selection, but not many.

To make your angels, you will need sturdy paper or cardstock. You could copy music onto cardstock if you wanted, but I think its a lot more colorful the way we did it, and Maddy loved color! You can get 3 or 4 angels out of one sheet, depending on how big you make them..I traced the openkng of a large drinking glass for the body and then found a Tupperware lid about half that size for the sleeves. (I love my Tupperware!) You need one large circle and two small ones to make 2 angels. 

Trace and cut out your circles, and then cut them in half, one half circle for each body and two for the sleeves. Take a pencil or wooden spoon handle, something round, and run the paper between it and your thumb, kind of like the way you do curling ribbon. This makes a prettier curve when you glue them shut. Take your two corners and bring them together, making a little fold to mark the middle. Only fold the edge, not the whole thing!

Working one at a time, take a half circle and bring the corners together again, only this time you want to match up the edges, too, forming a cone. Glue the body cone by just overlapping the edges enough to glue into the cone shape. Put some glue along one edge and overlap the other edge. Use a clothespin to hold it while it dries, if you're using craft glue, or until it cools off if you're using hot glue. When you make the sleeves, you can overlap them like the body and have wide sleeves, or you can overlap the edges more to have narrower sleeves.

Roll and glue all your paper cones, then glue your arms to your body. Make sure you glue them down far enough to be able to put a head on her! My first one, the blue one below, I didn't take that into account, and I can't fit a head on her. Also, glue the arms a little bit toward the front instead of straight out the sides.

This is what they will look like from the bottom. This paper is double-sided
and really thick, so it was particularly hard to roll.

There are three different sizes in this picture. We mixed up the dresses and
sleeves on some of them.

For heads , you have a few choices. You can use styrofoam balls, ping-pong balls, big pearly beads.......or wood beads, like we did. That's because that's what I had and what we found at the thrift store. We didn't paint them and we didn't put hair or faces on them. That's the way we liked them.

Tie a little bow and glue it under her chin. For the wings, use lace that's about 4" or 4 1/5" wide and cut a piece 5 inches long. Gather it down the middle and tie it. Glue the wings to the back of angel just under the head. You can add lace or rick-rack to the bottom of the skirt or just leave it plain.

This angel is made from a Christmas card. I wanted to use as much of the
pretty border as I could, so I put the seam in the front instead of the back, and
I cut her sleeves at the corners. I really like the way it turned out.

Cut the straight edge of your half circle along the border.

We gave the topper angel a petticoat of lace to make her skirt longer.

While we were at the thrift store looking for heads, we found a bag of little doves that someone had already painted white! My hubby drilled holes down through them and I put them on pink ribbon along with a bead and a bell, and we hung those on the tree as well.

Now take a look at some of the beautiful trees that were auctioned off. I would have loved to have had every one of them!

There were quite a few and they were all beautiful, but I saved my favorite for last.

If any of you know me at all, you'll know that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
red, white and blue! This tree was donated by Perkins Elementary
School in Moapa, Nevada.

So that's day 8! I hope you enjoyed it and will make some of these easy, cute angels. We can all benefit from having an angel or two in our homes. And remember......Christmas is all about love, family and children. It doesn't matter what we eat or what presents we get, as long as the holidays are spent with loved ones. Love to all,