Make a Puppet: Recycled Egg Marionette

Tweet

After you’re done with your plastic eggs this Easter, save a few of them to make this puppet. This is a very simple marionette, and the process for making it isn’t too complicated, either. I guess it’s sort of a giraffe marionette, but you can make any kind of animal (or non-animal you want).

I put this guy together with hot glue, which is for parents only. And even parents should use a popsicle stick as a hot glue spreading tool (or use the Hot Glue Gun Helper kit, like I did). If you want to make the puppet without hot glue, use a quick-drying tacky glue. You need to let the glue dry between each step.

You can get all the supplies you need for this craft at the dollar store, but you probably already have a lot of this stuff on hand already. If you don’t have an Easter egg, try using a paper towel tube, or a small box (like the one Jell-o comes in!)

You Need:

• Plastic Easter egg
• 2 popsicle sticks
• 5 pink pom-poms, 1 white pom-pom, 2 purple pom-poms (or whatever colors you want!)
• 2 googly eyes
• 5 pieces of narrow ribbon, cut to about 4″ long
• 3 pieces of fishing line, cut to about 8″ long (you can also use ribbon for this step)
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks, a popsicle stick to spread glue

1. Glue two popsicle sticks together in a cross formation.

2. Make head by gluing two purple pom-pom ears to a white pom-pom. Add the pink nose pom-pom, and the googly eyes. Glue head to end of a ribbon.

3. Glue four pom-poms each to the end of a ribbon.

4. Glue legs to bottom of egg. Glue neck ribbon to top of egg.

5. Glue one end of fishing line to head (between the ears is good). Glue other end of line to front end of popsicle stick cross.

6. Glue one end of another fishing line to the body (where the neck ribbon attaches is a good spot). Glue other end of line to front end of popsicle stick cross (just behind where you glued the first line).

7. Glue last fishing line to back-end of body. Glue other end of line to back of popsicle stick.

You can get more complicated by attaching additional strings to other parts of the puppet, but for this tutorial, we are ending here! Make a couple puppets and put on a show (like my favorite scene in The Sound of Music!)

Here’s a little how-to video:

I’ll try to do a round-up of a bunch of other projects you can make with plastic Easter eggs, so don’t throw them away.