Angel Sculpture Made From Repurposed Wood and Recycled Pieces PLUS How to Make your own Beaded Wood Trim Tutorial

My latest architectural angel sculpture...

 She's large, almost 3 feet tall, and I created her 

using lots of repurposed and recycled bits.

This is the fourth angel I've made. It is so much fun 

to me to combine all those random pieces and come up with 

something unique and beautiful.

It started with this pile of stuff, some I ended up using, some not,

but the main piece was a huge wooden balustrade that one 

of my sister's gave me.

Here is the wood balustrade for the body, on top of that is a wooden 

fluted furniture foot and on top of that is a round wood furniture foot for the head.

I used my last two pieces of the wood with the carved detail for the wings.

I joined the wing pieces with a galvanized metal star that was once a lid to a candle...

I knew I would use it one day.

To make it sturdy, I made a frame for the base using scrap lumber

cut with miter saw and screwed in from the bottom.

After the main body pieces were assembled, I brushed on a base coat of tan paint.

This time, instead of using my normal block painting technique for the layered paint look, 

I took a short cut and applied spackling paste randomly on the body... that's the white

areas in the pic. I rubbed it on with my hands and with a putty knife and let dry.

When the spackle is dry and you can start brushing and layering paint. 

Your brush will naturally grab onto the bumpy areas and you are are

just that much closer to a wonderful aged finish.

After I brushed on the green, I block painted 

adding a few more colors here and there.

I have several different sizes of blocks I use, depending on the 

area, and I just wipe them off and reuse them.

If you have globs of thickened paint in containers

that you would normally throw away, don't.

"Globby" paint is perfect for this technique.

This is after all my base layers of paint, ready for the next step...

I started adding white paint to the body... you can also see the layered 

teal, green, turquoise and white I added to the base.

After the white was applied, I decided the body needed a little more detail.

I used a technique I've done before using plastic beads and spackle

to create a carved, beaded wood trim look.

This is a dresser I did years and years ago, one of my niece's has it now. 

It had a grooved recess around all the drawers. I glued 

the plastic beads in the groove, covered with spackle and painted.

It adds lots of interesting detail to a piece.

Once it's all painted, I think it looks pretty authentic!

On the angel, I glued the beads on in two areas using hot glue...

I used Flexall (flexall has been discontinued), because it's what I had on hand.

I've also done this technique with spackle or joint compound as well.. 

You just smooth it over the beads, creating a thick layer and let dry.

When it's dry, sand down to create a smooth finish and paint.

Of course... I had decided to add this after I had 

painted everything, so I had to go back and redo the 

painting on that part!

This is how it will end up

For the bottom of the balustrade, I added studded fleur de lis...

I started with fleur de lis wood cut outs bought on Mardi Gras clearance.  

I layered them with spackle and paint for a rusty look then 

added painted thumbtack "studs" to add a little more interest.

I love my thumbtacks, I've used them on 

pumpkins, Christmas ornaments and dragonfly bodies too.

For the wavy metal trim on the body, I used squares of aluminum flashing.

I had oxidized the sheets in one of my making things rusty and aged batches

and used wavy scissors to cut strips.

The halo started as a rusty piece of metal from a lamp...I promise that's

paint under my nails. I hammered it flat and coated it with poly to 

darken the rusty part then lightly brushed a little teal paint.

I ended up swirling a little bit of starry wire around the halo as well.

I don't have a pic, but at the end when it was all painted, I added a wash of thinned 

brown paint to the whole piece and wiped off excess to tone the whole thing down 

and a coat of satin poly.

I screwed everything in from the back and she was done ;)

I really love how she turned out. She would be lovely at 

Christmas or left out year round.

Visit my new online shop featuring my mosaic art.

I still have items and clearance paintings in my Etsy shop as well.

You can also find me on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Pinterest too!

Thank you so much for checking out my angel!