Teach Me Tuesday: Portable 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 edition of Teach Me Tuesday comes from Kelly at All Things Made By Kelly. She has a lot of great projects for kids and even sells genius little magnetic travel games through her Etsy shop. How smart!

If you are looking for a fun project to make for a gift for a child, this portable puppet theater is very cute! Kelly has throughly detailed instructions for making the project on her blog, but I’m just share with you a portion of the project to wet your whistle a bit. Gosh, I’m feeling tricky today!

Kelly shows us how to make a puppet theater:

What you’ll need

2 sheets of foam board
6 sheets of 12×12 scrapbooking paper in your choice of colors
about 5 1/2 yards of 1/4″ ribbon that coordinates with your paper choice
2 13″ pieces of 1 1/2″ ribbon that coordinates with your paper choice
2 pieces of fabric 5″ x 7″ (finished size)
7″ of non-adhesive velcro
1″ of adhesive velcro
items to decorate the theater
Mod Podge (or an adhesive of your choice)
glue gun
utility knife or x-acto blade

My 10 yr old daughter helped taking the pictures and some turned out blurry. Sorry about that but you should still be able to see what I am doing in them.

The first thing you want to do is trace your paper on the foam board make a 12″ square. With the utility knife cut it out. I cut it out a little smaller than the 12″. You will need 3 of these and should be able to get 2 out of one foam board.

On one of your boards you will need to cut open a window. The opening should be 10″ by 6″. Measure 1″ from the top and the sides and 5″ from the bottom. Cut out the opening with your utility blade.

Now you will add the paper to the boards. Apply a thin layer of Mod Podge to both the foam board and the back of your paper. Lay the paper on the board, and smooth your paper until all bubble disappear. Repeat this step for the front and back of the 2 boards without a window.

On the board with the window, after you apply the paper to one side turn it over and cut the paper out of the window. Then repeat with the other side.

Here is where you get to add your decorative elements if you would like. I decided to add gold stripes to the fronts only but you could add pictures or clip art, anything you want really. I’ll show you how I added mine. I took my scrapbook paper and cut it into 1″ strips and measured 1/2″ from the sides and made a mark and then marked every inch after that. Then I placed a strip at the first mark 1/2″ in from the side and then every other inch. It took 6 strip per board. I used 18 strips in all.

Now you will use the 1/4″ ribbon and glue it around the edges. First using the hot glue put a dot at the end of your ribbon and fold under so that the raw edge is hidden. Then start gluing it onto the edge of your board (Tip: you will want to start and stop at the bottom of you board.)

When you get all the way around find where the ribbon meets and then cut the ribbon off of the spool a little longer. Before you glue it down you will want to fold under the end and glue it hiding the raw edge. Then finish gluing it to the board. You will want the ends of the ribbon to meet but if it overlaps a little that will be ok, too.

Now you need to get your fabric pieces. You can hem the fabric or what I did was use Fray Check.

At the top of the window glue the edge of the fabric down having the fabric coming out behind the board so that the edge is facing the front. Don’t put the fabric all the way to the front edge. Don’t worry about any white showing we will cover that up later. Do this for both pieces of fabric making sure they are side by side, as these are the curtains.

Using the 1/4″ ribbon repeat the process that you used to cover the outside to cover the edges in the window. Start with the folded end of the ribbon in a bottom corner. Go all the way around the window covering the edge of the fabric. Make sure you push it into the corners and finish up and the same corner you started in making sure you fold the raw edge of the ribbon under before you glue it to the board.

Take the 13″ strip of 1 1/2″ ribbon put glue on the end. Fold the edge under 1/2″. Repeat on the other end. You will want to do this for both strips making them 12″. These will be the hinges for the theater.

Take your board with the window, the front side up, and on the left side put a bead of glue down the edge. Take one of your 12″ strips and place it on the glue a little less that 1/2 from the edge. You can eyeball it…

And scene.

Wanna see the rest? Of course you, do! Hop on over to Kelly’s blog to see the rest of the tutorial and the finished project, and be sure to leave her a comment!

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It’s time to announce the winner of the Good, Better, Best giveaway! Out of 115 entries, the lucky winner is:

Congrats to commenter #84, Julia from Hooked on Houses! I’ll be emailing you shortly to get your shipping information.