This gorgeous paper bag angel craft is incredibly easy to make and is a great Christmas nativity craft for kids.

Along with making the traditional Santa Claus, Rudolph and Christmas tree crafts every year, we also love angel crafts. Our latest is this pretty paper bag angel craft.

After little ones make their angels, they can put their hand inside the paper bag and will have a blast flying around their sweet angel puppets.

[This craft was originally published on November 27, 2016. It has been republished and updated with a how-to video, a revised tutorial and additional photos.]

How to Make a Paper Bag Angel Craft

Read our easy step-by-step tutorial below for how to make your own Christmas angels. Make sure to watch our video tutorial inside this post before get started too.

Supplies Needed to make this Paper Bag Angel

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  • white paper lunch bag
  • skin tone paint
  • paintbrush (we love using sponge paintbrushes when painting paper plates)
  • 10-inch circle doily
  • gold glitter stick (we received ours from our friends at Craftprojectideas.com. You can find them at your local Walmart in the craft supplies aisle.)
  • construction paper or cardstock paper (whatever color you want to use for the hair)
  • black marker
  • pink crayon
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • tape

Directions for Making your own angel crafts

  1. Start by painting the bottom rectangle section of your paper bag with your skin tone paint. Set your paper bag aside for the paint to dry.

“What if I don’t feel like getting out the paints? Do I need paint to make this craft?” 

Trust me, we’ve all been there! Painting is so much fun for kids, but sometimes I’m not always in the mood to deal with cleaning up a painting project. Don’t fear because paint is not necessary to make this fun angel craft.

If you’d rather not drag out the paints this time, you can simply use crayons, markers or colored pencils to color the face of your angel. In fact, we love these new multicultural crayons from Crayola.

  1. Cut out three rectangles from your cardstock or construction paper to use for you hair. Glue them around the face of your paper bag angel craft.

If you want to define the hair, cut small slits along all of the rectangle pieces and separate and curl the end of the pieces. If you choose to make a boy angel, you can simply use one rectangle glued to the top of the paper bag.

  1. Cut your 10-inch doily in half, then fold each of those section in half again. Secure the wing sections by adding a dot of glue on each folded corner. When your paint is finished drying, glue the doily wings onto the back of the paper bag.

  2. Using your black marker, draw eyes, a nose and a smile on your angel. We also used a pink crayon to color in some rosy cheeks.

  3. Bend one end of your gold glitter stick to make a halo circle. Wrap the end of the circle around the remaining section of the pipe cleaner to close it.

  4. Finish your paper bag angel craft by taping the gold halo onto the back of your angel with a piece of tape. Then bend the circle halo down in the front of the paper bag to create the angel halo.

My favorite aspect of this easy Christmas craft is how each child can customize their angel to look however they like, both boy and girl. A classroom full of customized angels is sure to be a joy to see!

Playing with the Paper Bag Angel Puppet

When children are ready to play with the angel puppet, they place their hand inside the paper bag and bend their fingers forward over the flap at the top of the bag.

Now they can move their puppet around and watch their angel fly and sing their favorite Christmas carol.

More Easy Paper Bag Christmas Crafts for Kids

Preschoolers will have a blast designing and playing with these easy paper bag snowman puppets. It makes a fun craft for winter or a Christmas theme.

Kids will love pretending to be Santa’s little helpers after making this cute paper bag elf craft and putting on a puppet show.

Here’s a fun twist on the popular elf on the shelf Christmas idea. Use a paper bag to help you create these darling sitting elves for a fun Christmas craft.