February 20, 2008

Making hand puppets


chloe's puppet, originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.
My children's classes are busy finishing up their claymation videos and thinking about what they would like to try next. Some of the groups will be making puppets.
This is exciting to me - every time they choose this - as I love to make puppets. Some will be large scale, other classes will make hand puppets like the one above.
8 years ago daughter Chloe made this little gem. She took a pair of her old ballet tights and cut them up to form the head. She used fleece for the "coat and scarf" and felt for the hands. Being the glitterglam she is she added the huge sequins for buttons. Her simple drawing on the stocking head was done with a sharpie -(my favorite part!) and the hair was some repurposed fake fur handed over to us by a friend.

As she was just starting to sew at the time, we used a combination of hot glue and stitching for the construction. All in all it stands as one of my favorite pieces of her artwork ...(so far)...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You sure she was only 8 when she did this? Wow!

Susan Schwake said...

actually she was 5. i cut out the body from the fleece as it was too thick for her, but she drew on it with sharpie so i would kow where to cut. i ran the hotglue and she did the stiching and drawing.
it's pretty easy!

Anonymous said...

Don't be so modest. It's not THAT easy. I never had puppets that looked this good when I was that young. Sheesh. Mine were the stuff nightmares were made of (unintentionally). ;) I think you both are just more artistically talented than me but that's okay. I can still enjoy seeing what you do. :)

maggie said...

glad i found your blog. nice post about puppets - this one is a gem...reminds me of the anne tyler book, 'morgan's passing' in which one of the main characters was a puppet maker.