Puppets on display and my building journey

adijay

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Hi there guys!

First of all thank you for accepting me on this forum. Let me introduce myself (again), my name is Nuno and I'm from Portugal. My motivations on starting puppet building were my huge passion for Sesame Street, my recent fatherhood and the fact the I'm a volunteer on a Pediatrics ward on a local hospital and like storytelling with puppets.

I'd love to build some replicas of the Sesame Street puppets, starting with Count von Count which is my favorite and apparently my daughter's favorite too! So if any of you have any tips, tricks, suggestions or patterns that can provide, I'd be very much appreciated!!

So my very first puppet is Mr. Crumble (a clear association to a Cookie Monster's relative!). I've used some blue fur, black felt for the mouth, cardboard for this puppet as well as my family's old, Pre WWII German made, foot pedal Sewing Machine, a Triumph Primatic (Branded Triumph, built by Haid & Neu) (below).
I've built this puppet by following some of Adam Kreutinger's tips on youtube, so a big thank you to him!

As this is not the best of Mr. Crumble's pictures, I'll be posting some more briefly.

https://flic.kr/p/2g6thCE https://flic.kr/p/2g6tfxB

This puppet is actually on its version 2 as the first one was ruined when I tried to glue two cardboard pieces of mouthplate onto the felt (I know it's not nearly the best material to use for mouthplate but I was trying out). I added too much glue and it went through the felt and onto the fur. I forgot to mention that my crafting skills are barely existent but I'm improving!

But that didn't hold me back! I went and made it all new again. This time I made it longer and wider (I have very big arms and hands).

Also made his tongue with red felt and the eyes with ping pong balls. For the eyes, I used a film canister (Yeah I still shoot film!) and made a hole on the bottom of the ping pong ball. Then glued the googly eyes you see on the picture with some contact cement. So far so good. It took me a while to figure out how to attach them to the puppet but my wife got me the solution. 4 tiny holes on the balls and the some seam matching the fur color and you barely notice it. Well but my sewing skills are very low too so the right eye became a bit loose. I'll do it all over again in the near future.

Also as a request from my wife I made it with no arms (I was planning on puting some arms and had already made some handrods, but well maybe the next one.

Hope you like it, please post your feedback below!!

Regards
 

adijay

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Also recently I boguht some foam to build more complex puppets. "Unfortunately" I was too greedy and bought 3cm foam and found out the it is too thick to build the puppets, so I have to cut it in half with a medical grade scalpel (so far so good, but the next one will be 2cm only!).

So far I've made some noses and glued them and stuffed with cotton now only have to cover them with fleece.

Also I've been cutting some patterns I've found around the web into cardboard which I think it works best to outline. However I'll have to resize some of them as my hands are too big as I mentioneded before.
 
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