JoshPrime Makes Stuff

Hey Reader! There are so many projects finishing lately. I have been really busy and need to start up some new stuff very soon. I have a few ideas up my sleeve. I have been pretty blocked with new crafting projects that speak to me, but I have a new puppet project I want to tackle and another quilt. I really need a whole room to store all my various crafting projects. Then I would probably want to separate that by craft. Really I need a craft house. House hunting aside, it is time to wrap up construction on the dragon puppet! This project has been fraught with issues, but its finally time to get it complete. As you can see, sewing the body together was pretty simple. The head was tough but the body was really just a rectangle of fabric that I tapered into a small tail. I will need to fill this puppet's insides with fluff to really make sure the body looks like it has some weight to it. The solid color wasn't working for me - and not just because it isn't green like ...

Hey reader! We have had so many puppet posts lately! This is going to be another one, except we are going to be doing something I haven't ever attempted before - vacuform eyes! I feel like a ringleader at a circus. Hold your gasps and those with weak dispositions should exit the blog now (That's not even a lie because the eyes look really creepy for a while). Mouth assembly was like most of my puppets where I used the foam head to guide the size and shape of the plastic and the velvet. I sewed in a strap for my hand as you have seen me do a few times. I added a bit of foam to the back of the head so that it would look more natural - if a blue furry dragon can ever look natural. Now for the really fun part, making the eyes! I have been working up the courage to try a vacuform eye for a while now. I have seen the crew on the SyFy series Faceoff use the vacuform to make awesome hand painted eyes for their custom makeup creations. I started by making a vacuform mold ...

Hey there readers! When we last left our friend Blue, he was all sewn together and had some fancy new gold horns. What he was lacking was eyes and some other little finishing touches. It is kind of upsetting that the eyes are the last thing, because they are pretty much the best part and really gives the creature a life of its own. I started with the mold I had made previously , to make some eyes for this little blue fellow. I had some leftover materials from that build and I don't think they held up as well as I was hoping. Some of the eyes I made came out great, while others never fully hardened. They had this strange gummy bear texture that I was certainly not tempted to eat. Detergent pods are not edible. I know this is only tangentially related, but why the heck are we still making detergent pods? So much money is being invested to make sure people know that the companies are doing everything they can to make the packaging safer. Why are they even a product in the first pl...

Hey Reader! I know its been a week since you last heard about how the dragon puppet was coming along. When we last left it, it had crazy loose fleece skin and a face that was equally part cat and part human - in that it looked like neither of those things. Regardless, I decided it would be green. The thought was that as I work on my rainbow series, this new addition could serve as the green puppet. You will see why that was incredibly wrong as this story unfolds. Call that foreshadowing. You know, the dramatic device where an important plot point is mentioned early in the story to return later in a more significant way. First step in creating this puppet's new fur was to use my pattern and cut out some panels. That pattern sure does look weird, but it fit with the fleece so I had to just hope that it fit. You will notice that my fur is white. That is because we are doing to try dying fur again! If at first you don't succeed, fail at it twice. I mean - attempt it twice....

Hey reader! I promised you a new toy this week! Again, it isn't exactly new, considering I bought it almost a year ago, but I hadn't found a good project to use it on until now. It is my very own VacuForm machine ! I was not aware of VacuForm machines outside of the SyFy series Faceoff . They are super awesome devices that allow you to sculpt something in clay or another medium, and then duplicate it in plastic! Shout out to Adam Kreutinger again for showing me that it could have an application in the world of puppets. He uses it for noses. I will probably do that eventually, but for today it is going to be used to make some horns! The one I got is for dentists. Inside the box is the machine itself, as well as a baggy full of ball bearings. These get poured into the tray at the bottom of the device. Notice that there are small holes in the tray. Ball bearings are also small, but not as small as those holes. That is quite fortunate. The idea is that the ball bearings a...

Hey reader, I saw this awesome puppet by Tiny Badger and wanted to try my hand at making something similar. I was preparing to go to a convention and thought that it would make a great prop for the floor. Before I packed my bags and headed to WhedonCon to talk about running the coolest podcast , I would have to make sure my puppet was ready to go! Pictured: Definitely not a cat I have been talking about carving a foam head for a while now. Since this puppet's head was going to have a much different head shape than anything I had made before, it was time to give this a try. This is one of those things that I just dove into without a tutorial. I just found my block of foam (that I got inside my packaging materials for a 3-D printer a few years ago) and started carving. I looked a few pictures of cat and leopards for reference. I thought a cat-like dragon would be cool. Unfortunately, you would certainly not know it to look at my carving. This is apparently what I think cats...

Hey Reader! It has been a long time since I wrote about my plan to create a series of puppets in rainbow colors . I got distracted by a bunch of other important things craft projects! What could be more important than finishing a puppet? I know, I agree with you there, though you can pretty much get the answer to that question by reading the backlog of posts I wrote since March. Anyway, I am back at it with my blue friend who is named Blue. I will certainly never be accused of creativity. I had a plan in place to do something very different, but after seeing the success of Sprocket, and that he was out of my care after the auction, I was inspired to improve on my Sprocket design .I saw a few things I could do to make that design more clean and exciting, so I wanted to get to it before all of that fell out of my head. I used another carpet to make this puppet, these things are amazing and inexpensive furs for puppets. Generally, the pattern is exactly the same as Sprocket. The b...

Here we go reader! The finishing touches of Sprocket! I really like the look of this little guy. The fun fur is great, but every time he moves he winds up with fur in his mouth. It hides his face and makes it less effective. With Grizwald, I gave him a serious haircut on this face to make it less noticeable, but he still winds up with fur in his mouth. I had seen Adam great hair tutorial and wondered if it would work on a whole body. He uses glue like a hair gel on the puppet to hold the hair in place. I was extremely nervous coming at my puppet creation with glue after I spent hours getting him all ready. Adam insists that if it messes up you can just thin it with more water, but I was still nervous. I definitely felt a little strange squirting glue on my hands and rubbing it on fur. It was like all my life I had been given the message never to ever do that. Next Adam will be telling me to play with matches or leave the stove on. I also tried to do what he does in the tutoria...

Hey reader, I am just as surprised as you are that I am getting to a part 2 immediately after a part 1. I feel like I have been all over the place lately. I am starting my YouTube channel and that has cut into my craft time considerably! This puppet needs to be finished up so that I can get it to the auction though, so back at it! The next step in the process is to make the mouth plate. I have done card board mouths, poster board mouths, and plastic lid mouths. The plastic lids are the most secure and long lasting, but the creation process is much longer. I think I finally worked it down to a quicker process though. I punched four holes on either side where the elastic will go, and then sew an X into the elastic. It is much faster than my method where I force the needle through and need a pair of pliers, that's for sure. It kind of happened by accident. I have reorganized my craft supplies and couldn't find my thick elastic for mouths. I was left with a thinner elastic I ...

Hey reader! I know that I have a puppet project in progress right now, but I was asked to donate a puppet to a silent auction to raise money and I didn't want to give away a puppet that was part of a set - so it was time to make something new! I really enjoy making puppets with fun fur, but it is so expensive. I am always looking for reasonably priced fun fur. Grizwald was made from fur remnants that were already on sale so he was pretty much a the same price as a fleece puppet - but fur can be 3 to 4 times as expensive as fleece so it is always a little nerve wracking when I take the plunge and make a fuzzy puppet. Then the other day I saw these awesome carpets for college dorm rooms that were on clearance. I guess March isn't the best time to start decorating your dorm room so they were priced to move. This pink carpet is super cool with a nice thick fur that would work great for a puppet. I was slightly concerned that it would be tough to free it from the traction rubb...

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 ...