Teach Me Tuesday: DIY Puppet Theater

If you would like to be featured in an upcoming edition of Teach Me Tuesday, please email me at LivingWithLindsay@gmail.com and we’ll chat!

Today’s Teach Me Tuesday comes from Beckie at Infarrantly Creative. I first “met” Beckie when she was the winner of my Five Dollar Challenge contest back in the Spring. Her blog is full of so many wonderful projects that it was hard for me to believe that I hadn’t discovered her blog before then.

Let me just tell you – You are NOT going to want to miss her Ballard Designs floral plaque knockoff. It’s one of my favorites out there. I mean, who wouldn’t want to learn how to copy this artwork for NINE DOLLARS? It’s definitely on my list of things to create for my home.

If that doesn’t immediately make you a fan of Beckie’s, her Roadkill Rescue parties will. She has a special knack for rescuing discarded furniture while she’s out on her morning jogs (y’all, that cracks me up), and transforming them into beautiful pieces for her home. She’s even started to have blog parties where everyone can link up their very own Roadkill Rescues and enter to win awesome prizes. The next one will be on November 18th, so start searching for your roadkill!

One of the awesome Roadkill Rescues that Beckie has transformed lately is an old hutch turned puppet theater. This one you have to see to believe.

Beckie transforms:

So as promised here is my tutorial on my puppet theater.

As stated before it started as this hutchy kind of thing. The first thing I did was clean it…GUHROSSSS! Then I took off the backer board.

It wasn’t stable enough to handle my three year old boy so I knew I had to stabilize it somehow. I got out some scraps of plywood and measured the width of the hutchy thing and that is how wide the top of my parallelogram is. Then I widened the bottom to give it the stability it needed.

Using a circular saw, I cut out two of them and screwed them into the sides of the puppet theater and I achieved the stability it needed.

Then using a 5/8″ drill bit I drilled holes in the sides and inserted a 5/8″ dowel rod (cut to size) for the curtains to hang from.

Next I sanded the whole piece down and gave it a coat of primer followed by four thousand coats of the free Glidden Paint I got in Apple Red. Note to self: DO NOT BUY GLIDDEN PAINT. I am a Behr girl all the way. I digress… (Note from Lindsay: Hmmm…I’m about to break open my free Glidden paint on my ugly coffee table. Now, I’m scared.)

Then I decided to to use the backer board as a chalkboard on the front. I cut it down using a utility knife since it was just a thin wood composite. After primering it and painting it with chalkboard paint I nailed it in place with thin nails.

Since it did not cover the entire piece I cut some trim to frame it out using my miter box and saw.

Then I laid it out in place to make sure it looked perfect..and it did!

I sprayed the molding with American Accents Canyon Black spray paint. Since there wasn’t anywhere to nail it in, I used Liquid Nails and clamped it in place. Some of the glue oozed out but I just touched it up after it was dry.

I made little curtains out of fabric I had on hand and hung them from the dowel rod. I added baskets to the back for him to store his puppets in. I want to find different storage for back there but I am using what I have until then. (Don’t judge the rustic moose basket…it was free!)

I have one happy little boy and I am enjoying a late night “show” before bedtime of and pig and a fish becoming friends and beating the big bad wolf.

You don’t need a hutch type thing for this project. Any small book shelf would work. It really was an easy project. I had mostly everything on hand. I did spend $7.45 on the molding which killed me since it was a free project. However, $7.45 for a puppet theater is worth it in my book. If you try your hand at this please email me, I would love to see your finished project.

I mean, really. How adorable is that? Thanks to Beckie for showing us this great project!

Be sure to head on over to Infarrantly Creative to see what other goodies you can find. Go ahead and subscribe to her blog feed so you won’t miss a project!