Day #39: A Radishingly Beautiful Ballerina

Well, yesterday's ballerina was a bit of a...well, a dog. During dinner tonight, I noticed a vase of seedpods. I love seedpods; they look so alien, some look so bizarre. These particular seedpods look like this:

If you know what this actually is, please let me know. I just like the way they look!

As I was looking at it, I noticed that if you were to invert the shape...it looks a lot like a tutu. What can I say? I just have ballerinas on the brain. I do have two daughters and my house has been swathed in pink crinoline for a while!

It took me a bit of rummaging through cupboards and the fridge before I found the perfect head: a radish!

I strung her up so she will spin -- my daughters will have fun with her in the morning.

Day #38: Dancing Avacado(g)

We just returned, just walked in the door, and I still needed a puppet for today. I had no ideas and feared I was back to my paperbag back-up plan. I walked into the kitchen to look around desperately, and this is what I saw:

I love avocados. I wish they grew on trees in Virginia. That would be awesome. But look closely at the mesh bag...do you see those two holes on the top part. I don't know why the manufacturer put them there, but I had a genuine "Ah-hah!" moment of clarity. I knew what to do.

I cut off the mesh part, flipped through a magazine, cut out an image, and applied tape.

Ta-daah!

I took the extra meshy material and made a tutu. The holes from the top photo are under the tutu and meant for fingers!

In action!

Now I really, really need to go to bed!

Day #37: Flower Power

This weekend we are away from home to celebrate the life of my husband's maternal grandmother, Jan Belle Isle Robinson. She was an extraordinary woman and will be dearly missed. Today's puppet is for her:

Felted mohair and wool, beads, and raw silk were used.

The puppet is a hand/glove puppet.

It moves really well!

I was hoping to take some more video footage, but our hotel connection is really slow.  I will post some up when we get home. (Soon...)

Day #36: Styro-mania continues (It's a croc...)

Yesterday I was working in a makeshift studio in my basement while packing for a trip. Today I created a puppet in a hotel room in Jersey! I brought a box of basic supplies (the usual: glue gun, bamboo, fishing line, sharpies, scissors, needle/thread...) into the hotel.

I began as I did yesterday:

Packing styrofoam from a bunch of boxes in my attic. I have lots of this!

I used two pieces of the mysteriously shaped foam. I had fun making this -- teeth, eyes...

The shape really worked well for a crocodile head, and it was fun adding lots of detail.

...nostrils!

 Love the red background...hotel wall!

Day #35: Styro-magic -- a Whale of a Tail

We were cleaning out our attic a few months ago and threw out a bunch of stuff. While sorting and purging, I came upon a whole bunch of weird styrofoam packing thingies (that's the technical term) that look like this:

Sorry for the speaker jack...it's because I'm multi-tasking. I'm blogging while doing laundry and packing for a trip. I'm working on top of my giant freezer in my makeshift home studio:

Not ideal, but it works in a pinch.

So I had a big bunch of these weird styrofoam pieces...I was sure I could do something. And so I did. Several somethings, actually. Here is my first creation:

I took off a sliver of the styrofoam and made a tail...

...I used bamboo for the rod and added string for a moving mouth.

Close-up of the tail.

What else could this be? (Tomorrow!)

Day #34: Puppet-gami

Full disclosure: I found the instructions for this puppet project on-line. (I didn't want to have to fall back on my paper bag puppet just yet.) I'd goofed around with stuff like this before, but I actually thought I should follow directions for once. I also really wanted to post up something fun for kids to make.

And you can be a lot more creative than my mock-up!

It has a pretty nice rebound spring!

This is best suited for ages 8 and up. Some of the folds are tricky -- especially towards the end. There are a number of sites that have this particular project, but this was the one with the best, stey-by-step instructions. The paper folds create a "hinge" that actually some push back to it (like using a compression spring to keep the mouth open).

Day #33: RATS -- I left my camera at home (Part 2)

Seriously, rats.

I couldn't believe I had left my camera at home. I was going to be working a really long, late night at the studio and no camera.

But "rats" is a good name for this post anyway. It wasn't supposed to be a good name for a post the post about working on the mouse puppet -- but I had done my math poorly. So now it was the perfect name.

Math?

I'm using felting techniques to create these puppets and wool fibers shrink as you work them, so there is some math involved. I knew I might have some technical difficulties on my mouse puppet, so I was working on a "rough draft" and using a different type of wool.

Uh-oh. I should've known better because different fibers can have different shrink rates. I was looking at about a 50% shrinkage...but really I was only going to get about 42% from this wool. Usually, I sample fibers and test the shrink rate. But most are about 50%, so I decided to chance it. [Note to self: bad idea.]

I realized early on that the puppet was not going to shrink to the size I wanted (grrr....), so I altered plans and started shaping it into a rat form.  Can you see the rat? It can be tricky to identify a puppet/character (unless you're making it -- then it's easier) when it's still in the process of being created.

But I'm making lemonade from my lemons. I need a puppet I can mess up on a bit without worrying about it. Now I have it. Yes, it was supposed to be a little mouse. It's going to be a giant rat. Yippee!

Now for the fun part!

Eyes....I love putting eyes on puppets; it's when they come alive for me. It's when they get their personality. I tested several types/sizes of eyes. I played with eyelids. Here they are some of the combinations I checked out:

Too big?

Too small, but almost beady...

Closer...

Hmmm....

Playing with eyelids...

Hmmm....

I was going to call this post "They Eyes Have It," but I'll settle for "Rats!"

Stay tuned...