In Which We Build a Puppet Theater

Eeps, sorry about the radio silence there. K. and I have both been sick, and many things got derailed.

Here’s something we’ve been working on in between long sleeps and consuming meds: a puppet theater for K’s nephew’s birthday.

It began life, as so many good kid-things do, as a large cardboard box. K. did a little surgery on it.

We covered all the graphics with two layers of duct tape. As you’ll see, I became way enamored with duct tape during this project.

One of the funnest things about collaborating with K. is that he has a superb engineering mind. I made the curtains, but he figured out how to rig a simple pulley-type mechanism so you can open and close them from the inside. Very theater-like.

Here’s a view from the top: there’s an inner curtain, so Logan can reach under it to operate the puppets, while remaining invisible. The inner curtain is sheer, so he’ll be able to see the puppets (and audience) through it.

More K. genius: he needed holders for that inner curtain that would suspend it at an angle. So he cut the necks off two plastic bottles and partially melted them with a candle to create the proper angle. Mc-freakin’-Gyver.

I figured out a way to make the lettering from duct tape, too – which is pretty dang exciting for future projects.

Duct tape also forms the edging. Loves me some duct tape.

We’re making puppets, as you can see up top there, by printing some of Logan’s favorite characters and affixing them to cardboard, with a chopstick handle. I have the rest of the Scooby gang and some super heroes to finish today – ACK!