Video:How to Make Puppet Crafts With Household Items

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Transcript:How to Make Puppet Crafts With Household Items

Hi, I'm Kaytie Sproul, here for About.com, and today I'm going to give you some ideas for making puppet crafts with household items. If you're looking for some fun and frugal art activities for your kids, look no further.

Supplies for Making Puppet Crafts With Household Items

You'll want to have a few basic craft items available before getting started, including, but not limited to the following:

• scissors
• glue
• markers
• construction paper
• cardboard
• pipe cleaners
• cotton balls
• and googly eyes

Instructions for Making Puppet Crafts With Household Items

Let's start with brown paper lunch bags. With a little glue, some construction paper, and a set of markers, crafting an adorable duck puppet, or a friendly, tie-loving bear is a cinch. Simply cut out the facial features you want your puppet to have and glue those to the bottom of the lunch bag. Embellish the rest of the bag as you see fit and get ready to entertain your friends and family. Paper plates are yet another fantastic canvas for creating puppets. You can color the back side of a paper plate red, add some black spots, and attach a black circular piece of construction paper to the outer rim to create a lady bug. These same craft elements, along with a pair of googly eyes, can also make an adorable panda bear.

Gluing the edges of a strip of paper to the upper side of each plate makes an ideal hand strap for the puppeteer. If you've got a pile of mismatched socks in your laundry basket, put them to good use by making a sock puppet. Use a piece of cardboard (cut to the size of your hand and folded in half) as your puppet's mouth. Cut into your sock's seam-line about two to three inches and attach the sock to the cardboard piece with hot glue. Cover the rough edges with a piece of felt, add some eyes and hair, and you've got the perfect sock puppet.

Other Ideas for How to Make Puppet Crafts With Household Items

For this next one, you might want to start saving your empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls because they make ideal puppets. You can simply color the upper third of a cardboard roll black, and the lower two-thirds green. Make one- to two-inch incisions, spaced three-quarters of an inch apart on the black side of the tube and fold them downward. Slap on a pair of googly eyes, and a hand-drawn, crookedly stitched mouth, and you've got Frankenstein. Wrapping each tube in construction paper makes for a sturdier puppet, and there are literally dozens of options when it comes to creating characters out of cardboard rolls – just use your imagination.

Finally, make use of your child's popsicle sticks once they've served their initial purpose. Simply drawing a face and wrapping some colorful pipe cleaners around the stick is enough to create an interesting puppet. You can also cut out different animals or insects, add a few unique touches, and glue them to the end of the stick for some variety. Whether it's lunch bags, paper plates, socks, cardboard rolls, or popsicle sticks, the options are endless when it comes to homemade puppet crafts.

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