Wooden Tea-Spoon Angel

My yearly challenge is to create a Christmas decoration that I can prepare double the quantity - one to take home and one to put on the Christmas Tree in the church at our last session. Now, I previous years I've gone for something very simple such as decorating wooden stars with glitter and Christmas buttons, but after my children entered a decorated wooden spoon competition last Christmas, I wondered whether I could make something with a smaller spoon.

The idea hit me one sleepless night, wooden tea-spoon angels. Wooden teaspoons cost approximately £4 for one hundred. E's very taken with the teaspoons and keeps stealing them.

The dress is made from a folded piece of cardboard with a neckline hole cut out. I decided against adding wings because making seventy angels is enough cutting out. The hair is made of felt and the halo is made from half a pipe-cleaner. E decided that the angel was best decorated with stars, we also tried with with a doilly but a bit too sophisticated for toddlers, and glitter would take a little too long to dry for us.

- Firstly tie the ribbon around the spoon - if you do it afterwards the ribbon sits a bit high.

- Slot the spoon in the neck hole.

- Glue the dress and the spoon using PVA glue.

- Glue on hair.

- Add face and decorate angel.

- Use half a tinsel pipe cleaner as a halo, wrap several times round the head, this also secures the hair.

Edit. Ironically, the night before the wooden teaspoon angels toddler group was a very sleepless night too. However, I think they worked out really well. The parents struggled with the ribbons, but that was partly my fault as I made them 20cm instead of 30cm by accident. They look great hanging on the Christmas Tree in church.

If I was to do this craft again, I'd just do it as one to take home though, as I had to prepare 80 angels as our capacity is 40 children, so this involved a lot of cutting. The easiest way to cut the angels out was to fold A4 inhalf horizontally. You then get three angels to a page, but you do have to cut them out individually, but this way the back and from of the angels match.

Here are some of our efforts and on the Christmas Tree.