TPIB: Paranormal Romance – Angels

Without a doubt angels are hot right now in YA fiction (Paranormal Romance).  You have the Fallen series by Lauren Kate, Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick and now the Embrace series by Jessica Shirvington – just to name a few.  So I have been wracking my brain trying to come up with some angel crafts that weren’t incredibly hokey (angels out of paper plates – oh my!) and yet weren’t wicked expensive.  Sure, we could do variations of some of the same things we have done before; I mean, angel wings will work nicely in bottle cap jewelry or marble magnets or what have you.   But then a great idea was staring me right there in the face on the cover of Embrace . . . you could make 3 dimensional book covers with angel wings using your teens as models.

I don’t have all the right tools at home to make a great step by step photo montage of this craft for you, so bear with me.  But in the end, you will use a photograph of your teen (preferably with their back facing the camera) and nothing more than white paper, scissors, glue and photo shop to create your own book covers.  You will only need photoshop (or any software that lets you add text to a picture) if you want to add book “titles” and “authors” onto the photo, with the author being the teen’s name.

This is the book cover look that inspired this craft activity

Step 1: Creating the initial photograph

Take a picture of your teen, preferably with their back facing the camera

My initial photograph

After downloading the photos to your computer for printing, you can add any text at this time if you would like.  I think it would be fun to use their favorite angel book title – or have them make up one of their own – and put it on the page.  Think of those fake magazine covers they put you on the front of at amusement parks.  You can also put the teen’s name on the photograph to indicate that they are the author.  For the really creative, put together some fake cover blurbs.

After you have your photograph looking the way you would like, print.  Color is preferable (and teens are more liekly to have color pics) but black and white would still work.  Black and white book covers are cool, too.  Look no further then Lauren Kate and Becca Fitzpatrick to see how cool they can be.

 
If you wanted to skip all of the above you could just ask your teens to bring a 5×7 or 8×10 photograph of themselves to the event, but it would need to be a full body shot.

This is what your final tribute cover will look like, but with 3-d papercut wings as opposed to clip art

Step 2: Making your angel wings

Fold a plain white sheet of paper in half

Cut along the folded the basic shape of what you would like your angel wings to look like.  There are a lot of good examples if you just do a Google image search for angel wings.

Before unfolding, cut any addition flourish you want inside to make the wings look the same.  Pretend you are cutting out paper snow flakes

Unfold and then cut your angel wings down the center line making two distinct wings

 Then glue them with craft glue onto your picture to add a 3 dimensional affect

 To make your picture a more sturdy wall hanging, you may want to glue the photograph itself onto poster board, cork board, etc.

If you use a forward facing picture, you will need to cut small slits on the photograph and glue the wings on the underside of the photograph through those slits so it appears as if the angel wings are coming from behind the teen.  And as you can see, I cut various types of wings to test the waters.  The key is to get the right size/proportion for the photograph you are using and bigger is definitely better as it is easier to give it more detail.

If you need another activity to do at your event, I found this great wire jewelry craft at Imagination-Jewelry.

Image and instructions at http://www.imaginations-jewelry.com/2011/11/02/faux-bow-angel-wings/ Let me know if you do this, I would love to see pics. And be sure and add any additional craft ideas you might have in the comments.  I am now off to practice my angel wing cutting. Read my review of Embrace by Jessica Shirvington here You can find much better examples of paper cutting at the All About Paper Cutting blog

Filed under: Angels, Crafts, Paranormal Romance, Teen Programming, TPIB