January 21, 2013

How To: Make Homemade Puppets!

homemade puppets, homemade sock puppets, green kids, eco-friendly puppets, make your own puppets, diy puppets, how to make puppets, puppets for kids, puppet crafts, felt puppetsKids love using their imagination and hosting their own puppet shows at home. Puppets are also great toys to pack in the car or diaper bag for on the go entertainment and fun! You can utilize everyday household materials to make your own puppets with your kids! Here are two ways to make super cute, simple puppets using a sock, or felt.


Materials You Will Need:
  • Socks that have lost their mate
  • Felt
  • Yarn
  • Glue/Hot glue gun
  • Ribbon
  • Googly Eyes
  • Scissors

How to Make a Sock Puppet:

Everyone who has ever done laundry knows that sometimes two socks go into the wash, but only one comes out. Here is a quick and easy way to make a new friend using a spare sock, some felt, glue, googly eyes, yarn and ribbon.

1) Take some yarn and measure out how much you want for the hair. Then just tie a piece of ribbon in it to keep it in one piece.

2) Put the sock on your hand to figure out the placement of the felt mouth. Cut out a half circle shape and glue the mouth onto the sock. Then glue the eyes and hair to the sock, and voila! Meet Patty the puppet!

How to Make a Felt Frog Puppet:

For the felt puppet, I made a personable frog!

1) Using your felt, cut out circles to glue the frog's googly eyes to (as seen above), circles for rosy cheeks, and a small strand of thread or yarn for the smiling mouth. I also used a piece of white felt for the frog's stomach.

2) Cut out two pieces of felt in the shape of a frog. Then, using embroidery thread and a thick embroidery thread needle, stitch around the edges, but not the bottom -- this is where your hand goes! Glue all of your pieces onto your frog and now you have a friendly Ferdinando the froggy!

*You can use old baby socks to make smaller finger puppets, or use oven mitts as well! Just glue or draw some eyes on to bring fun, imaginative friends into your home.

*You can also create your own puppet theaters using cardboard boxes -- or make this adorable miniature puppet show stand for finger puppets out of a cereal box!

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