Well if you want defense, you're going to have to keep training, especially if you lab. In the long run, the lab ray tends to take away more defense than it gives.
As for defensive weapon suggestions:
Make sure you get all the useful faerie abilities as you go up in level. At level 16, you should have Burrow, Quench, Steam Shield, and Water Breathing - they each have defensive use. At level 30, you'll want to get sink, and at some point you'll want to pick up a healing ability or two.
Keep the
Leaf Shield and
Scarab Ring, those are both phenomonal weapons for their price.
I suggest upgrading the
King Kelpbeards Blessing.
Winged Hammer is marginally better, but you're likely better off if you can afford a real upgrade to
Patched Magic Hat,
Thief Dagger,
Sword of the Dead or
Amulet of Inevitable Betrayal for your light defense. If you keep training defense, eventually you'll want to use a
Dusty Magic Broom or
Air Faerie Crown for light defense. And in the extreme long run
Dark Faerie Collar is probably worth it here.
For the more immediate future, I strongly recommend getting a
Shiny Shoal Shell Shield, an
Earthen Scorchstone and a
Mystical White Cloak, maybe even a
Virutpets X-514 Super Shield, and rotating a couple different ones in and out of your set. They are all decent value defensive shields and playing with them now will help you to get a feel for defensive battling.
Sadly, there really aren't any other pure shields worth buying until you get up to around a million neopoints, so you're going to want to look at dual-duties. At the range you can afford right now,
Jade Staff and
Superior Shovel are worthwhile, and if you save for a week or two,
Cloudy Wand of Storms,
Frozen Wand of Crystals,
Golden Compass,
Winged Scarab and even the rather disappointing (but not as bad as many think)
Rusty Lampost are worthwhile. In the long run,
Hobans Hat,
Mask of Coltzan,
Air Faerie Crown and/or
Bottle of Magic Sand are the dual-duties you want to aspire towards having. If you find yourself upgrading weapons a lot faster than you train,
Bracelet of Kings is very good for pets with high defense but Strength below 85..
Once you get to the range where you're condsidering those weapons, you'll want to look at shields which fully block an icon type and also block more icons, such as
Yooyuball Keepers Chest Guard,
Faerie Tabard,
Pirate Captians Hat and
Ghostkershield. Those shields tend to be weakest against fire, so you may also wish to consider a fire reflector such as
Clawed Shield or even the
Flame Reflectozap (which is looking a lot better with the recent spike in the price of the clawed shield)
Speaking of reflectors, it's worth picking up a couple of the buyable 50% fragile reflectors to play with them. A few can be key in some of the DoN battles, (
Double Dryer for the Giant Ghostkerchief and
Shovel Plus for Commander Garoo) Reflection needs to be a consideration for any defensive battler, and the 50% reflectors are cheap enough for you to afford on your current budget.
)