All Hands On Deck...

...or, these are a few of my favorite things. I went out shopping over the weekend to my favorite puppet supply stores, Home Depot and Lowe's, America's best known hardware stores.



Any puppet builder will tell you that there is no one place to purchase puppet building supplies. There is inspiration everywhere and I compiled some well-known supplies readying myself to complete a build this past weekend. In the image is a package of doll joints from the hobby shop, hands and foam pieces from the fabric store, Weldwood contact cement and a small container of flat black paint from the hardware store, pre-fab wooden handles for the control rods from a materials exchange and drop ceiling wire for the control rods as well [from the hardware store as well.]

Quite a while ago, I purchased The Complete Doctor puppet building tutorial DVD from Dr. Puppet. I have watched the various installments at different points and it's just a wonderful resource to go back to time and time again to re-establish technique for the budding puppet builder. Jay, who runs the Dr. Puppet website, talks through the lessons like a puppet building friend who has tried all the techniques and knows some of the best and easiest ways to get professional results. In my latest viewing, I picked up on Jay referring to the group of puppeteers over at PuppetsAndStuff.com. I knew the site but had failed to join until recently. One of the admins at Puppets and Stuff is Daryl of StiqPuppet. Daryl was known for his blogtv channel of puppet building tutorials. I was thrilled to find that Daryl has transferred the videos to a Youtube account. Daryl shows various aspects of puppet making as well as proper puppet performance, cleaning your puppet and even a video on how to keep your puppet workshop organized. We're so lucky to live in this day and age where inspiration is right at our fingertips. Sometimes, I'll even grab the good old Foam Book and just leaf through to stoke the ideas.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't give a nod to Pasha over at Project Puppet who has been SO instrumental in getting my dreams off the ground. His new website Puppetsmith will be providing even more inspiration for puppet builders for years to come, I'm sure. My latest puppet was designed from the Project Puppet Simple Series Roly pattern. His name is Lee and he will be starring in an anti-bullying show for K-5th grade elementary school assembly programs.