Major update today! Our puppets now have arms and eyes!
As the doll joints we purchased proved to be far too large for these puppets, we decided to try stitching the arms onto the body by hand.
We knew that the resulting "joints" would be a bit fugly, but these particular puppets are intended to be clothed so we didn't worry too much about that.
^ Ugly arm joints. If you know a better way, please let us know!
Armed and ready for sight!
Here are some of the spoons we were experimenting with for the eyes. We attempted various methods of cutting and filing the handle and ridge of the spoons. Those seen on the right were a bit too narrow for the look we wanted. Fortunately, Veronica found the perfect spoons at a local Chinese restaurant. They are nice and round and very THIN, which makes them very easy to cut without cracking! Yay for cheap spoons!
We followed the instructions on the trusty Youtube tutorial to apply the eye-lashes.
Not bad, eh?
All done with the eye-lashes, now for the eye-lids!
Chuck's puppet will have manly blue eye-lids.
Veronica's will have purple.
Done! That wasn't so hard, was it?
(Actually, it was! It should be noted that Chuck burned himself every single time he touched the hot glue gun. And Veronica burned him with it at least once!)
^ This eye was a failed attempt. As punishment, Chuck threw it across the room in disgust!
Veronica mistakenly placed her pupil in the center of the eye... making it look stoned.
Testing the eye focus on Chuck's puppet!
Veronica's puppet tripping out!
Ain't he cute?!?
Veronica corrected her pupil error!
Don't they look happy!?!
Awe, they were made for each other!
Next time we'll get started personalizing the puppets with hair and clothing!
After making large parts of about 60 or 70 of this design, I finally tried something on the arm attachment that I like a lot. Basically once the arms are stuffed and ready to go I take the seam on the body and use a seam ripper to cut a slit the size of the arm and then stitch back over it on the sewing machine. It ends up looking pretty good. You can sort of see it in the latest shots on puppetaweek dot com (week 17?) on the yellow and purple whatnot.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, it's surprising how good the arms can look just whip stitched on from the bottom (though I think the new way I'm doing it will help maintain the shape better for feminine puppets)
Cool! I'll try that with the new puppet I'm starting on.
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