My mom is a pretty awesome grandma. She is the come over to my house and sleep over and bake cookies and make crafts kind of grandmother. She is way more thrifty and far more creative in coming up with art projects for the girls to make then I am. Possessing only the vaguest notion of what Pinterest is she does things old school, coming up with crafts through sheer imagination and trial and error.
These spoon puppets were something my mom came up with. She made them with the girls last time they went for a sleepover at grandma’s. My daughters had a lot of fun putting these together and were very proud of their creations. They were also dead simple to make. The lovely thing about making monsters or aliens is there is no wrong answer, let your imagination go wild, the sky’s the limit.
For this craft, grandma hit the dollar store and bought wooden spoons, sheets of coloured felt, sheets of coloured foam, and some dish clothes. She also lucked out and found a package of stickers shaped like spooky halloween eyes. Other things which you may find handy to have include brushes, paints, pipe cleaners, small pieces of ribbon, some sort of palette for the paints, a permanent black marker, white glue, and a drop cloth and/or aprons if your pint-sized assistants are the messy sort.
Step one is to paint the spoons. The kids loved doing this part. Just pick one colour, paint the spoons top to bottom in a solid colour and then leave them to dry for a bit. Once the spoons are dry you can add painted polka dots and splotches to your monsters skin, or you can skip along to the next step.
The foam sheets are a really brilliant way to dress up your spoon monsters. They can be cut into any shape, easily, even with child-safe scissors.
As an example, from left to right:
Green foam hair glued to back of spoon, spooky sticker eyes, a bit of cut out ribbon for a mouth, eyebrows, nose and circle around mouth made with a fine-tip permanent black marker, white foam t-shirt shape x2 glued together with the spoon in the middle to form the body, with yellow foam hands also stuck between the two shirt pieces, ribbon glued down front of shirt for decoration, and black felt skirt with small red ribbon belt.
Orange foam hair glued to back of spoon, blue hair-bow glued to front of spoon, spooky stickers eyes, nose and mouth drawn with a fine tip permanent black marker, purple foam hands glued to pink foam cut into a t-shirt shape, pink foam t-shirt glued to spoon, purple felt skirt tied on with green ribbon belt.
Ribbon hair glued along edge of spoon, spooky stick eyes with black marker eyebrow, ribbon necklace glued around top of spoon, arms formed from one pipe cleaner twisted around the spoon, dress/skirt made from a dishcloth.
To make a spoon puppet dress out of a dishcloth, or any piece of thick soft material, you simply cut a very small slit in the center of the cloth and slide the spoon handle in, pushing the cloth along until it’s at the height you desire. Depending on the type of cloth your dress may stay in place simply by sliding it on, if not you can add a dab of glue to hold it at the spot you choose.
To make your spoon puppet a felt skirt, take a sheet of felt, cut a series of small slits along the one side and thread a piece of ribbon through it. Then you simply wrap the skirt around the spoon handle, pull the ribbon tight and tie a bow.
A couple of the characters had trousers cut out of foam sheets, or felt sheet, and glued in place. One had a body made out of a decorated toilet paper tube, because that’s what the five year old requested. As I mentioned, the sky’s the limit — there truly is no wrong answer when creating your own puppet monster creations.
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