How to Make an Angel Tree on a Budget

Today, we are going to make an Angel Tree. 

If you don't know what an Angel Tree is...Basically, it's a tree at your church or place of business with ornaments that have a child's name and Christmas wish list on them. The point of it is to have people take an ornament, shop the items, and return them wrapped to be delivered to the children. It gives people the chance to bless others and become "angels" of God's blessing at the holidays.

Anyways, I had to make one for my church.

At first, I wanted to buy some angel decorations and then attach the list to each one. However, no one makes angel decorations anymore!!! Or else they are really expensive.

So, I perused the Dollar Tree and came up with an idea.

We had 12 children's lists, so I bought two boxes of these red and silver bells for $1 each.

A bag of this decorative shred is $1 as well.

Okay, I couldn't find ANY angel tree toppers, so I made this one out of red and white cardstock and taped it to a Dollar Tree star tree topper. You can look at the next two pictures here and figure out how to make your own.

Okay, here is how I made the angel lists themselves. First of all, get your kids' names (or initials), their ages, and their wish lists. Make one angel per child. (I did this in Publisher.) You can use my template at the end if you need it for the angels. Or just Google "angel clip art" to come up with your own template.

Then, print your angels on cardstock. I printed the boys on red and the girls on white.

Cut them out.

Okay: Really important step. Cut the heads out like this:

This is another view of the weirdly cut head.

Then, fold one side tab in. . .

. . .and then the other one in. . .

Then, slide the folded tabs into the bottom of one of the bells.

Once the tabs are neatly inside the bell, they will sort of unfold a little and that will lock the "head" in place.

Now to make the halo. Get your bag of decorative shred.

Get a little piece of tape like this.

Take a small piece of shred and make it into a loop. Put the tape where both of the ends of shred meet.

Then, just fold the tape around the shred.

Then, slip it onto the head of each angel like this.

Then, you can use the rest of the shred and extra bells to help decorate the tree. 

The whole project only cost a couple of dollars! (Minus the tree...which I didn't buy, so I have no idea.)

Template:

The End!