Art Project - Puppets

Letter Callum wrote to Top Gear in 2008 aged 4.5 years old

Those that know my son Callum know what a huge car fanatic he is (earlier this year on facebook he answered a quiz where you had to name the car manufacturers by their badge alone and got 20/25, not bad for a six year old I think) and part of that love is a love of Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson is my sons hero. So it was no surprise to me when he told me that for his Daddy's birthday he wanted to put on a Top Gear Puppet show and could we make the puppets ourselves. Of course that's not a problem!

Now there are many ways in which you can make puppets, you can use lollipop sticks, pom poms, cut out bits of paper/card, stickers, the list is endless. With us we went the recycle and art box route.

Jeremy Clarkson in Puppet Form

We used toilet rolls and at the back cut a small hole big enough to fit a finger through. Next we scrunched up some toilet paper and placed that inside for the hair. We coloured in the hair and the "body". Next I pierced holes on both sides to put a pipe cleaner through which could be moulded into arms and hands. Then we used various craft objects to stick on and make a face etc. Callum decided he wanted an army, sheriff feel so he made Jeremy (above) a Sheriff and then personalised the others to his liking. The hardest thing we found was getting the jewelled pieces that we glued on to stay in place and dry out, if we stood the puppets upright they slowly dragged downwards and if we laid them down they went round to the back. In the end we just sat there for minutes holding them in place but in hindsight I should have put these pieces on first and used some sellotape to hold in place while they dried and then carefully peeled it off afterwards. Of course there are plenty of ways you can go about making the puppets, you could have used different colours of paper/card and stuck that around the roll. Let your imagination run wild as I say.

As always I would love to see photos etc of anything you make. Oh and to show how well these were made, Callum still has them all in one piece a few months shy of a year.

Here are photos of the others we created on the same day.

Ninja Stig

Richard Hammond whom is actually shorter than James, Jeremy and Stig. Callum made me cut him down to size.

James May, with his hippy pink ears