Teensy Bead Angels

Posted by Ethne~

I have a few friends who need a guardian angel watching over them.  

Angel for my Friends

This is the angel my friend, SA, gave me shortly before I got pregnant with the girls.  I am certain that my guardian angel has checked in on us many times.  We are very blessed.  I gave an angel to my bff, SK, when she needed to be looked after.

When I made the girls’ teensy pink bead fairies (see how cute those are here), I had an inspiration – I should make bead angels.  Sure enough, they had teensy angel kits for sale at my local bead shop here in big city, MN.  At $3.95 each, the price for the kits was pretty reasonable.  But…I knew I could do better!

All you need!

I purchased faceted fire-polished glass beads to be the angel bodies.  These look quite a bit like Swarovski crystal beads but are a ton cheaper.  The bead store had a giant bowl of these beads selling at $2.30 per ounce.  I picked out the three beads I wanted and they cost me a whopping 14¢ - that’s 4.6¢ per bead.  (For comparison, an equivalent Swarovski crystal would be about $1.00 per bead.)

Sorry the pic is bad - the bead is about the size of a small pea.

I used the exact small wings bead that the bead store used for the kits.  Those cost 90¢ each.  Aren’t they cute?  These come in gold tone as well.

A 3mm white pearl is the face of the angel.  Those were 12¢ each.

The last bead is a tiny decorative disc bead called a small turk heishi.  No idea about that name; but they are cute and were only 35¢ each.  These also come in gold tone.

The most expensive purchase was a bag of 2” headpins to assemble the angels.  The bag of 50 headpins cost $3.50, which is .07¢ per headpin.  I’ll obviously have plenty leftover for future projects.

There were no instructions for the angel kit, but it was easy enough to figure out.  Here’s what I did:

Take your headpin and put the large crystal bead on it.  (If the hole of the bead is too big for the base of the headpin, put a little clear seed bead first, then the crystal.  I had to do that for two of my angels.)

Next put the wings on.

Then the pearl angel head.

Now the angel’s halo.

Use the technique from my fairy tutorial (here) to finish off the headpin so there is a loop at the top.  I’m still working on my skill at this technique, but I’m not terrible at it.

I have to say these are the cutest ever.  I know they will bring blessings to my friends.

I spent a total of $8.30 on the purchase, but broken down per unit, each angel cost $1.90.  But the price doesn’t matter, really.  I know that my friends will love them and the thought behind them.  Now hopefully the angels will arrive in the mail soon!