Rainbow Puppets! Blue Pt 1 - Editing a New Foam Head
Hey reader!
I have three big craft projects that I want to work on pretty much RIGHT now. They are: learning how to make soap, doing a rag quilt, and this series of puppets. I want to do 7 monster puppets each done in a mostly monochromatic design with the 7 rainbow colors. The other two projects WILL happen (and I will eventually finish the twister quilt), but sometimes inspiration just strikes.
I was supposed to be recording a podcast episode, but my co host had fallen ill with the an illness. I decided it would be fun to assume it was something unusual or embarrassing (like explosive diarrhea), but it was probably just a cold. While she recovered from her wicked bad leprosy, I was left home alone. So began my late night puppet inspiration.
Since it was already night, I would have to make do with what I had in my box of crafts. I found that I had three different shades of blue fleece - and a large amount of one shade from the Danny Sexbang puppet.
As you can see, I have black velvet for my mouth, a super light blue for the skin, two shades of darker blue, some contrasting yellow and a yellow boa. My thoughts immediately moved to using the darker blue for inside of ears and the lighter blue for eyelids, but I have lots of time to figure that part out. Not pictured here is some really funky blue chenille yarn I am going to use for hair, and may brand new never-been-used vacuform machine. I really want to make some horns. There will be a whole post on vacuforming so get ready for that nonsense.
After I sent JustLeah a few empathetic texts about her wandering spleen, I set to work. For this series, I want to really push what I can do in terms of variety. I want to do at least one very different head shape, perhaps with a snout or a beak. I want one with live action hands. I want to do some wild ears and things. Generally, I want them to all look markedly different from one another - and not just because of their colors.
I started thinking about what I wanted for this blue puppet. Without clay to sculpt a new head shape, I really had to stick to a pattern I had, but I also wanted this puppet to be smaller. That meant digging into my pattern drawer and pulling out the smallest head pattern I had, which was for little Joey's head.
The Joey head is the middle right puppet. It is the smallest head I have done. It wasn't quite small enough for what I wanted to do, so I needed to do a little tweaking. When I am making only minor tweaks, I can usually just freehand things, though beware the pumpkin head drama.
It is a little hard to tell in this shot, but that yellow head is much smaller than the original pattern. I know what you are thinking: "Josh, you haven't called back JustLeah's overactive bladder in like 5 paragraphs. Also, haven't you already done a lot of round heads?"
I know, I know. She can just take some Detrol and be fine. (Is that still a thing? I feel like those commercials haven't been on in years. They probably found out it causes death or dry mouth or something terrible like that.) The head thing... Yes this is another round head. However, I have a bunch of plans to make this one very different. We will get to that when it comes time to do the mouth plate and build the horns. Yes, I said horns. So excited to give that a shot.
I cut out my head parts and got ready to do the gluing. Once again, when using rubber cement you should wait a while for it to get tacky before you try to stick them together. Or, if you are impatient like me, you just fill the damn thing with pins to hold it in place.
Acupuncture never really appealed to me. It always seemed like I was going to come out looking like something out of Hellraiser. I bet if Leah had regular appointments with an acupuncturist she wouldn't have caught a bad case of narcolepsy. I recognize you can't catch narcolepsy, but whatever.
The head is much smaller than any head I have made before. I think having the blue puppet be smaller will give me a good place to scale up to. It is also a pretty good idea that I make smaller puppets anyway, just because there will be 7 of these things at the end of this. If they are all the size of Danny and Arin I am really going to need a bigger apartment.
I let it dry and then I had myself a nice foam head. Next time we will be working on the mouth, which will give me another opportunity to introduce some variety to this series!
Wishing JustLeah a speedy recovery from her tragic case of polio.
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
I have three big craft projects that I want to work on pretty much RIGHT now. They are: learning how to make soap, doing a rag quilt, and this series of puppets. I want to do 7 monster puppets each done in a mostly monochromatic design with the 7 rainbow colors. The other two projects WILL happen (and I will eventually finish the twister quilt), but sometimes inspiration just strikes.
I was supposed to be recording a podcast episode, but my co host had fallen ill with the an illness. I decided it would be fun to assume it was something unusual or embarrassing (like explosive diarrhea), but it was probably just a cold. While she recovered from her wicked bad leprosy, I was left home alone. So began my late night puppet inspiration.
As you can see, I have black velvet for my mouth, a super light blue for the skin, two shades of darker blue, some contrasting yellow and a yellow boa. My thoughts immediately moved to using the darker blue for inside of ears and the lighter blue for eyelids, but I have lots of time to figure that part out. Not pictured here is some really funky blue chenille yarn I am going to use for hair, and may brand new never-been-used vacuform machine. I really want to make some horns. There will be a whole post on vacuforming so get ready for that nonsense.
After I sent JustLeah a few empathetic texts about her wandering spleen, I set to work. For this series, I want to really push what I can do in terms of variety. I want to do at least one very different head shape, perhaps with a snout or a beak. I want one with live action hands. I want to do some wild ears and things. Generally, I want them to all look markedly different from one another - and not just because of their colors.
I started thinking about what I wanted for this blue puppet. Without clay to sculpt a new head shape, I really had to stick to a pattern I had, but I also wanted this puppet to be smaller. That meant digging into my pattern drawer and pulling out the smallest head pattern I had, which was for little Joey's head.
The Joey head is the middle right puppet. It is the smallest head I have done. It wasn't quite small enough for what I wanted to do, so I needed to do a little tweaking. When I am making only minor tweaks, I can usually just freehand things, though beware the pumpkin head drama.
It is a little hard to tell in this shot, but that yellow head is much smaller than the original pattern. I know what you are thinking: "Josh, you haven't called back JustLeah's overactive bladder in like 5 paragraphs. Also, haven't you already done a lot of round heads?"
I know, I know. She can just take some Detrol and be fine. (Is that still a thing? I feel like those commercials haven't been on in years. They probably found out it causes death or dry mouth or something terrible like that.) The head thing... Yes this is another round head. However, I have a bunch of plans to make this one very different. We will get to that when it comes time to do the mouth plate and build the horns. Yes, I said horns. So excited to give that a shot.I cut out my head parts and got ready to do the gluing. Once again, when using rubber cement you should wait a while for it to get tacky before you try to stick them together. Or, if you are impatient like me, you just fill the damn thing with pins to hold it in place.
Acupuncture never really appealed to me. It always seemed like I was going to come out looking like something out of Hellraiser. I bet if Leah had regular appointments with an acupuncturist she wouldn't have caught a bad case of narcolepsy. I recognize you can't catch narcolepsy, but whatever.The head is much smaller than any head I have made before. I think having the blue puppet be smaller will give me a good place to scale up to. It is also a pretty good idea that I make smaller puppets anyway, just because there will be 7 of these things at the end of this. If they are all the size of Danny and Arin I am really going to need a bigger apartment.
I let it dry and then I had myself a nice foam head. Next time we will be working on the mouth, which will give me another opportunity to introduce some variety to this series!
Wishing JustLeah a speedy recovery from her tragic case of polio.
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
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