#20 - Hymn Angel Instructions

I uploaded this picture to Facebook last night and got so many reactions to it! Like I said on this blog last night, my friend Maria at church led this craft for our ladies group. She basically saw it somewhere and knew she could make it, went home and made it, without instructions. But she had to instruct the rest of us how to make these beauties, so I'm passing on my findings to you!

You will need:

• Hymn book (we had plenty at our church that were old and outdated; you can probably find them cheap at yard sales or thrift stores too)
• Styrofoam balls for the head (you can also use wooden ones that have the flat bottoms and create a face)
• Spanish moss for the hair 
• Gold twine or wire for the halo
• Any color ribbon you want to use for the bow, or a white doily

First of all, the most time-consuming part. You need to fold about 50 pages on either side to make the wings. We did 48 pages because this is what Maria told us - I'm sure if you do 45 or 50 it ain't gonna matter! Fold even any white pages at the front and back of the hymnal and include those in your counting.
 
Start at the beginning of the hymnal. Fold your 45-50 pages by taking the bottom right hand corner and fold it up, so the corner is touching the spine.

Next, fold your 45-50 pages from the back of the hymnal the exact same way - bottom right hand corner up to the spine.

Now, the pages left in the middle are going to create the skirt. You can do either the upper left or upper right corner and bring it down to touch the spine. I took the upper left corner and brought it down.

Your angel should stand on her own now.

Next, you'll work on the head. We took styrofoam balls and ripped out one page of a favorite hymn to wrap around the head. (You can rip out your favorite song before you start the craft, but we had extra hymnals so we ripped from those.) Wrap it around her head, you can't use too much tape.

I used "At the Cross".   :)

With a hot glue gun, glue the top of her head and stick some spanish moss on. Put as much as you want to, as long or short or quirky as you want.

Hot glue the head onto the bottom part of your angel. I had absolutely no issues getting mine to glue right onto the pages and binder of the hymnal.

Make your halo out of gold wire, or tinsel. Hot glue it on top of your angel's hair.

Now that your angel has an entire body, you can add her accessory. We used ribbon. We had gold, silver, and colored to choose from. You can also cut a paper doily in half and glue it onto her neck.

And voila!

We had a blast making these! Thank you Maria!