doilies | Today We Did

Laying out the wings.

Doilies make pretty angel wings and skirts. We cut a triangular section from a doily, and used this piece as the angel’s skirt, while the rest of the doily was turned upside down and became the wings. We glued the pieces of doily to an oversized pop-stick (like the tongue depressors the doctor uses to look in your throat). This formed the body of the angel.

Attaching the skirt and face.

I cut out circles of white felt to use as the angel’s face, and a third of a pipe cleaner (chenille stick) was bent around to form a halo. The halo was glued to the back of the felt head piece. The kids decorated their angels with glitter glue and glitter paint, and added little googly eyes. The middle angel in the picture above is actually covered in glitter, but it can’t be seen in the photo.

Painting an angel.

We stuck the angels up on the window next to where our Christmas tree is.

A halo.

The doilies are quite light and will not stay up on their own, and will droop without further support. We used blu-tack to stick the wings to the window, but we could have added another pop-stick (or two) onto the back of the angel to support the wings independent of where the angel was being displayed.

A’s angel.

I hadn’t seen paper doilies around for some time, so upon spying a packet of them in Wheel & Barrow, I bought some, thinking they would come in handy for our arts and crafts.

Dropping colours onto the doily.

Paper doilies are quite thin, and readily suck up liquid, so we used food colouring in water as our paint. We had some green, pink, yellow and blue coloured water, and when they mixed it made some interesting colours and patterns.

Tipping the doily to spread the colour.

moving the colour about.

We used a different paint brush for each colour, dropping the coloured water onto the doilies and then picking them up to make the colours run across the doily. After placing some drops of coloured water on the doily, we found that turning the doily around slowly like a steering wheel made some good patterns. A found it easiest to put some coloured water on, and then pick the doily up from one side and let that colour run off, and then put more drops on and pick up a different side so that that colour ran in a different direction.