Tuesday 17 August 2010

Puppet-Making Master Class, Part Two!

Here we go, Folks! Dig out your paintbrushes and find those needles and threads - we're makin puppets!
Here is the final instalment of my fascinating guide to making a Tiddles puppet - just think, if we all make one or two, Tiddles will take over the world! Now our puppet heads are nice and dry, they can be painted to make the little characters really come to life. All you need to do after this,is make a puppet theatre out of an old box and write a little play for your puppets to perform! Seemples!

The first thing you need to do is paint the paper mache head with an undercoat. I used a tester pot of white emulsion. This means when you paint the colours on, you will get a nice, bright coverage and it will look brill!


Here are the base coats on with cute little black noses!



Now for the fun part! Painting the detail on the little faces - I used a fine paintbrush to do this, as you can control the furry-ness better. I also used good quality acrylic paint, but poster paint or squeezy paint would do the job! For the eyes, I used stick-on plastic eyes, as they move around and look quite realistic. If you don't have any, just paint the eyes where you want them.




Now you need to make the glove part of the puppet - the bit where you put your hand! I have used felt for mine, but you could use any sort of fabric, as long as it's something which doesn't fray too much. I hand-stitched mine, but you could easily use a sewing machine if you have one. Remember to make a paper pattern first, roughly the size of your hand - you need to make sure your hand will fit inside and not be squashed!





Here is the finished Tiddles, made from recycled newspaper and a bit of felt!

1 comment:

quiltcat said...

Perfect! It's the painting that really makes them come alive, and be so distintively your Tiddles.