the story of: making princess puppets

Three months into this year of puppets, and I'm already wondering if I was crazy to start this. Making a puppet (or a few) each month takes more time than I realized it would, but I think I still like it, so I press on!

Needless to say, making 12 Dancing Princess puppets to go along with this month's story would have been a bit much. Plus, how would one person handle controlling all of those lovely ladies? I'll tell you. You put all 12 of them on one puppet. This is actually a legitimate puppet technique.

I tried very hard to find some good images of the type of puppet that this month's project is based on, but failed. The best I came up with was a diagram showing how to make a rod puppet that controls three characters at once (It's a PDF) and a video from Voyage of the Little Mermaid (at around 2:23 you'll see a bunch of fish making their way across the stage). Basically, you have a series of puppets that are all in one. They work well for crowd scenes, without requiring a lot of puppeteers.

So, while technically this month's PDF puppet workshop will have you making 12 dancing princesses, they are easy and come together to make one puppet. One person can now have 12 princesses dancing in a line. (You're on your own to make some princes for them to dance with!)

Download the 12 Dancing Princesses PDF workshop.

Oh, and if you aren't up for puppets, are just looking for some princess decor, or you need a good way to store your puppet, you can hang these dancing dolls on your wall like this!