A few years ago as I was helping a friend go through some of her grandmother’s belongings I came across a cute angel made of pasta sitting in the china cabinet. I took a photo and thought it would be fun for my girls to make. I had forgotten about the pasta angel until I was cleaning photos from my computer a couple days ago.
Needless to say, I went out and bought what I needed to make these adorable Christmas decorations. Here’s what I bought/already had:
- Paint brush
- White acrylic paint
- Glue*
- Wooden beads**
- Small ring pasta
- Rigatoni noodles
- Elbow macaroni
- Farfalle pasta (bow-tie pasta)
- Glitter
- Medium shell noodles**
*Regular school glue works just fine but takes a while to dry. You can use a hot glue gun to speed up time but I do not recommend a hot glue gun for little kids. **Wooden beads and medium shells can be exchanged for each other as seen in the first photo above.
1) Start by gluing the wooden bead or the medium shell noodle to the rigatoni for the head. If you are using a shell, you’ll need to carefully cut off one of the pointed ends to make it flat. Personally, I think the wooden bead is cuter than the shell for the head, but as my girls pointed out, it’s not a true pasta angel if it’s got wood for a head.
2) Depending on how steady your children’s hands are, you can start to glue the rings on the head for hair right away or you may have to wait for the head to dry first. Only glue rings on half of the head just like hair. If using a shell for the head, you only need to do a row of hair on the edge of the shell.
3) Once the head and the hair are dry, glue one farfalle to the back of the rigatoni angel for wings. If using regular glue, place (don’t glue) another piece of farfalle under the head to support it while the wings dry otherwise your angel will keep tipping and the wings won’t dry.
4) Finally, glue the elbow macaroni for the arms. Then have some patience as the whole thing dries.
5) Why I don’t have photos of the last part is beyond me. Oh well, last, but not least, paint your pasta angel white. It’s up to you if you want to paint the face white or not. We chose to keep ours natural. The hair on the shell face blended in too much so we did paint that white. While the paint on the wings is still wet, add some glitter to make them sparkle. We used white glitter but if you want it to stand out a bit more, use gold or silver.
There you have it, pasta angels. Aren’t they cute? Add a string to hang them on the tree or just set them out as decoration somewhere.
