I’m so excited about this DIY! You may remember that I made a cardboard town for Jack’s birthday party last month. One of my favorite structures in the town was this puppet theater:
The kids had so much fun with the theater and since it was on the smaller side and had more details, I decided to keep it. This is really easy to customize but if you want to make a similar design to mine, here’s what you’ll need!
To make the structure itself is pretty simple. Flatten out a cardboard box so that you can stand it on its flaps. Then all you have to do is tape each corner flap together on the top and the bottom. Use a box cutter or scissors to cut out the opening in the front. I drew an outline first and then lightly scored it before going deeper with the box cutter- fewer mistakes that way, I found. Then I cut a door into the back of the box using the same method so that the kids can get in and out without lifting the box.
Then comes the fun part of decorating it! I painted it white, hot glued fabric on the inside to make it look like curtains (tying yarn around the middle of the fabric helps!) and added some other embellishments like stickers and my favorite star garland.
I only made a few puppets for the party but since I planned on keeping the theater afterwards, I always planned on adding to our collection. We love the Cuddle and Kind dolls so much that I decided to make them in cardboard form!
Here’s what you’ll need to make these puppets:
I cut the flaps off of a few cardboard boxes and traced a bowl on them to get the perfect circle shape for the heads. Then I painted them and added yarn & card stock details to recreate the sweet details of the Cuddle and Kind dolls. Then I hot glued wood dowels to the back and then secured tape on top of them. Then I added different trim to each puppet to hearken back to the colors on the dolls’ bodies. Here they are, side by side!
I know I say this about every DIY but I have to because it’s true: these were so fun to make! Getting the details just right, trying new crafting techniques (that bow with poms on the unicorn?! I’ll definitely be doing that again), and paying homage to my kids’ favorite toys made this project so special for me.
Which one is your favorite?! What characters would you turn into puppets? Let me know in the comments or come say hi on Instagram and Facebook!
