Time to remedy that.
Puppets wear baby clothes, which are often more expensive than the the clothes I wear, so when we make puppets clothes are not included. Clothes also contribute greatly towards the character, so we prefer that their owners pick an outfit for their puppets that matches the character they’ve created. (Yes, I do actually hope that the people who buy my puppets take puppetry as seriously as I do. No, I don’t actually think that they do.)
We always ask that people send us a photo of the puppets once they are clothed, but they seldom oblige. This time around, I can show you a pic of the last two we made, fully clothed for a change:
Their new mom will use them to teach music to little kids, so naturally they are called Mini and Maestro. Cute, huh?
The daughter of friends of ours (technically the mother was my teacher back in primary school, but adulthood has this funny side effect of suddenly putting you on equal footing with people you’d have called “sir” or “ma’am” two decades ago) is studying to become a teacher. She needed a puppet for one of her classes, so she came to the experts. When she saw one of our grandpa puppets she immediately said she wanted one like that, and here he is…
We never did find out how many marks she got for our hard work…
And the other two kiddies led to a referral which produced the sisters:
Why are all these puppets so pale? Beats me. We have a chest full of different colours cloth, and a fabric shop nearby where we can get many more colours, but these are the colours our customers picked. Some people just don’t have any imagination.
If you’re new to the show, you can click here to see some of our other puppets.
if all else fails...use a hammer 
Your puppets are great!!!
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I’m glad you think so, thanks 🙂
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No problem! They’re cute and unique 🙂
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We aim for cute 😀
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I’m so intrigued. How long have you been making them for, and what inspired you to start?
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My wife and I both originally studied to be youth ministers, and in smaller churches the youth worker/minister is typically responsible for everything from toddlers to young adults. Puppetry is an extremely powerful tool when working with toddlers and children (and is quite effective with teens as well if done right), so we went to puppetry workshops to learn the correct technique.
Making your own puppets are much cheaper than buying them (to give you an idea, our puppets are fairly basic and on the lower end of the scale in terms of price, and the actual cost in materials to us is around 10% of the price we charge – the rest of the cost is for the skill and effort needed to make them), so we got some patterns, found the methods that work best for us, and the rest is history.
The wife has been making puppets since 2006 (for personal use), and since 2009 I’ve been doing the building (insides and the actual look of the finished puppet) while she does the sewing. We sold our first puppets in 2009.
We also do puppetry and write our own scripts, and with one youth outreach when I was still at a church I trained our youth group in puppetry and wrote and directed a whole production. I’d do it full-time if only I could find someone willing to pay me to do it 😉
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What a great backstory! So much meaning and depth. Truly amazing work 🙂
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