The Year of the Ugly Angel

I searched high and low (okay, at one Marshall’s and one T.J. Maxx…but with the insane amount of holiday traffic in this town, it felt like I went high and low) for a beautiful angel for our Christmas tree this year and did not find any that were quite up to my high standards. After one too many trips to cute little boutiques where they sell adorable handmade stuff, and after about ten too many perusals of Pinterest, I convinced myself that I could make a better angel than the stores – and at a better price! Being the fru-gal that I am, I immediately started scheming. 

The obvious medium for the angel’s head? Paper mache. (I’m not French, so I did not call it papier machée, thank you). I knew I’d need to make the head easily attach-able to the angel’s body, so I used a wire coat hanger. (Side note: This was right after I threw away all of the wire hangers in my house in a fit of rage and replaced them with fuzzy hangers bought with wedding gift cards at Bed Bath and Beyond. So I had to push back my start date till we got a batch of shirts back from the drycleaner.)

The first stage was…frightening at best:

Never fear, I told myself, I will make her much more beautiful. NBD. So I took a little trip to Michael’s, where I spent $8.50 on paints and a paintbrush for her pretty little head and another $4 on assorted fake feathers for her pretty little wings. Please get out your calculators and let’s keep track of how many hard earned dollars I spent on this cheap and easy project.

Came home, slapped on another layer of paper towels (uh, hello, who gets the newspaper anymore?). Let her dry. She now looked like a horror movie character suffocating under a wet blanket. So I got out my paints to try and cover that up.

This was probably the best she ever looked.

Next, I took a little trip to my local fabric store, where I purchased felt, silk, lace, gold sequined ric-rack, tiny fake pearls. None of my coupons worked, so this cost me another $24. Plus I got a free bunch of coupons to use next week when I will hopefully not be sewing anything else. Totally worth it.  I then returned to Michael’s in search of doll hair, which you’d think would be readily available but is not.

After gathering my strength for a few days, I set out to Hobby Lobby, which is only about 20 minutes away – but lies on the dreaded Other Side of the Mall.  So I spent approximately 45 minutes inching my way through mall traffic one sleety Saturday. Upon arriving at Hobby Lobby, I quickly dropped another $8 on a piece of poster board and a packet of creepy doll hair. A fun 45 more minutes followed in which I sang all the way through my new a cappella Christmas CD twice. 

At home, the real fun began. I started to assemble my little lady:

For those of you keeping track at home, I have now spent $44.50 on materials for my new friend. And this is what those $44 bought:

So far, I’ve received the following compliments on my talents:
 - “Oh!  She’s kind of…creepy.”
 - “She looks kind of young for an angel.”
 - “Yeah, she sort of looks like RuPaul.”

Sad, but true.

Evan tells me that, after spending so much time and money on this masterpiece, I have to spend at least this year with her atop our tree. He’s so domineering. So that, children, is how this came to be the Year of the Ugly Angel.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!