Christmas Puppets.

You know how life goes...

You move to a new apartment, get busy with your job and side projects, Thanksgiving  happens, your family does a bunch of stuff, and the next thing you know you've finally finished Christmas shopping and realize that you haven't updated your blog in two months.

Oh yeah, Sorry 'bout that!

Anyway, This year I decided, in an ill conceived effort to save money and time, to make my nephews and step-niece their gifts. I feel pretty comfortable posting the results because I'm fairly certain none of them follow this blog. The kids are the perfect age for this (Six, six, and four), in other words, old enough to get it and young enough to be easily impressed. To no one's great surprise, I made them all puppets. On Thanksgiving, I covertly found out what each of the children's favorite animals were, by the highly stealthy method of asking my sister Anne (their mom).
Nicholas's favorite is the lion

Cameron, like any six year old girl, loves horses

Michael's favorite animal in the whole world, for four year old reasons, best understood by himself, is a white mouse. I double checked this to make sure it was right. It has to be white.

I wanted them to be as simple as possible to operate, while still being fun to play with. The puppets are based off Sicilian Marionettes and have rope legs and tails ( braided clothesline. Incidentally,I discovered that clothesline is next to impossible to dye!). their bodies are made of polyfoam covered in fleece and felt with yarn and leather accents and simple carved wooden feet. the eyes are of course polymer clay.

My room mate, Joe was kind enough to shoot the photos. He also has some video footage that I will upload when I get it. I was hoping to take some additional shots, but apparently I forgot to pack my camera with me. If anyone remembers to get pictures of the children unwrapping these, I'll post them too.
Merry Christmas!