How to Create a Stick Puppet

Happy Friday everyone, Cinnamon here and I am going to show you all how I created this puppet. I was inspired by my Wayang Golek puppets in my collection which are wooden puppets traditionally performed with in West Java, Indonesia. 

(Wayang Golek puppets and Colonial statues on far right)

Supplies:

Creative Paperclay

5 Skewers

Masking tape

Cork or any type of filler

Acrylic paint

Wire

Exacto Knife

Needle nose pliers

Aleene's Tacky Glue

Lambswool (optional)

Sealer

First you will need to try to figure out what size you would like for your puppet to be. This will help you determine how long you will need for the sticks to be. I wanted to keep my puppet on the smaller side co I cut the sticks in half that I would use for the hands and left the other on for the body at full size

I took a cork that I had laying around and cut it down to size with an exacto knife. I used this for the basic shape for the head, put it on top of the long skewer and taped it in place with masking tape.

Once the cork is secure in place, begin to smooth clay around it for the head. Keep building up the head and the face. When you reach your level of satisfaction, set the piece aside to dry.

Start building the hands. You will need to take smaller pieces of the skewers and make sure they are long enough for the forearm of your piece. When you get the size of the skewers right, begin to chisel a bit into both skewers so that you could attach them to the body with a string later. I went an inch down from the back of the stick with my shaving.

Start making the hands on the other end of the stick. Don’t get too detailed since you will need a sort of mitt to run some string through for the sticks. Make sure you shape out a hole in the center before the clay dries for the string!

Here I am picking the head back up to work on some of the features of the doll. I let the doll head sit for a little bit so that it could begin to dry. It makes it easier to work up your piece in layers so that you can sculpt without disturbing the bottom layer.

Let the head and the hands sit out to fully dry. After the head dries, you can begin to build out the shoulders with your wire. It can be any gauge but I like to use a thinner wire so that I can manipulate it easier. Use your pliers to take some of the stress off of your hands. Leave a hoop on each shoulder so that you can attach the arms later

Once you have the shape of the shoulders, cover them with masking tape to bulk them out a bit and cover with paperclay. You can build a torso if you would like, I kept it simple and just added a little bit of clay under the shoulders.

Set the piece aside and allow it to dry. Take the main skewers that you will be using to control the arms and carve out a little notch as you did with the skewer for the forearms.

Sand your pieces down to get them to the level of smoothness that you'd like.

Get your thread and tie it really tight around the notches that you made and make a knot to attach the arms to the torso. Glue the string onto the skewer with e6000 glue.

Take a piece of thread and thread it through the hole in the hand and the bead on the other side of it. Take the thread and pull it back through the hole on the hand. The bead will keep the tread from going through the other side of the hand. Repeat the process on the other side of the hand.

Paint your pieces once they are dry. Put a sealant onto your piece.

Now take your hands and attach them to the sticks that you carved a notch out in.

Take a square of fabric and size it up with the puppet to see how much you want to use for the outfit. You can either make sleeves and a fitted top with a skirt or you could take the easy way out and make a cloak like I did. 

Optional, but this is a good time to add some hair onto your piece. I use Aleene's Tacky glue to attach the hair.

Thank you all once again for stopping by, and I hope that you enjoyed today's tutorial! You can find Creative Paperclay® at the following retailers Creative Paperclay® Online Store, Michael's, Amazon, Joann's.

See more of my work at Melandolly.com, catch updates on 

my Instagram page and here is a link to my shop!

 

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