acepuppets

Well after telling you about my preparations for the puppet show the Frog Prince and the fact that I was adding the twist of making the princess turn into a spider, wasp and a ladybird.  I have now made the wasp and ladybird puppets (I already had the spider puppet).

I used felt, the stuffing from an old pillow, black pop socks, metallic pipe cleaners and wobbly eyes to make my puppets.  I didn’t have a pattern I just cut my felt put and used my sewing machine to sew the pieces together, if I hadn’t used my machine I would still be making them now.  I am very much a novice sewer and have just graduated from sewing in a straight line to sewing in a curved line for theses puppets.

My aim was to make easily recognisable puppets that were robust enough to be manhandled by curious nursery children.  After every performance in an early years setting I let the children play with the puppets so that they can feel the story with their own hands and manipulate the character.

I managed to get feathers all over the place and my puppets looked more like baby owls rather than the insects they were.  I was looking forward for my tester (my son Alistair) to come and give his verdict on my puppets.  I did each puppet a different week, the first puppet was the wasp.

When I buzzed the wasp in front of Alistair’s face the first thing he said was, ‘Im’ scared’, which was how I wanted the children to feel.  Then he said, ‘Alistair have it’, which again was exactly how I wanted children to react, he then proceeded to test its robustness by waving it about and fortunately it stayed intact. 

Buzz buzz I am going to get you!

Look what I have found!

I can’t wait to perform with these puppets and I am already planning my next one to go with this show, which will be frog spawn and a tadpole.