Making Angels from Jesse Tree ornaments

"Not that one" she says.

Even though this seems like a process, the results are fun and great. My goal here was to transform the Jesse tree ornaments into the reality of Christmas. The preparations come to fruition at Christmas. I wasn't sure my 4 year old would get that, but she generally does. The Jesse Tree ornament are now angels. Here is what we did:

Our angels have three main parts: body, wings, head

Again, gleaning the good ideas from Catholic Icing, we took white coffee filters and scribbled on them with all different color markers. These will be the angel wings.

Next, spray with water until the colors run. This bleeds onto the table, so have other filters handy to mop up the color.

Set these on an old towel to dry. (After this, we broke for lunch).

Or, while the wings are drying, gather the ornaments off of your Jesse Tree. Since ours were printed on plain office paper, I mounted them on blue (for Advent) and pink (Gaudete) construction paper. Turn them over and paint on some glitter. Let dry.

Next, cut out head about the size of a quarter. I just folded some tan paper and cut out the head paper-doll style. They aren't perfectly round...but I'm not either. Using marker, add eyes, nose and mouth. My kiddo insisted on hair, otherwise all of our angels would be handsomely bald. Use yarn, raffia or marker/crayon for hair.

(Note the important banana snack...)

When the wings are dry, grab your stapler (or twist ties).

Gather them up from the middle and staple together. Repeat.

Hooray, wings done.

To assemble, I needed some extra length in the ornament hanging wire, so we straightened one end. Each angel needs three pieces of tape. One to attach the wire to the "body." One to attach the wings to the wire. One to attach the head to the wire. You could use glue or even hot glue, but I didn't have the gusto for it.

Whew! Our legion of angels. We did this Christmas Eve because I know we'd have the whole day to mess with it. It didn't take the whole day by any means, but it was nice to be able to not rush the process and let wings and glue dry.

Hanging them on our tree. Sorry, it is artificial. When the 11 month old gets a little bigger, we'll consider a try that doesn't have to be perched up high.

Merry Christmas. Glory to God in the Highest! Emmanuel!!