Quick & Easy Gingerbread Man Hand Puppet
I have a fun little project to do with the kids for you today. My daughter and I put these gingerbread craft kits together for her to make some money for Christmas gifts when she was young. I recently made them for a local Christmas boutique, too. I thought it would be a good one to share with ya’ll today.
SUPPLIES:
Felt (light brown: 2 sheets, black: scrap, pink: scrap, color of choice: optional bow or bowtie)
Buttons (three per puppet)
Rick rack (½” or ¾” wide spool)
Red pompom ball (small, ½”)
Scissors
Sewing machine
Frixion Pen (or use a regular pen and flip it so the it’s on the back side when finished)
Glue (craft glue, felt glue, Elmer's glue, hot glue if parent is helping)
If you are making a lot of puppets I discovered the most amazing thing when prepping for the boutique. You can buy precut felt circles on Amazon! It saved me a whole lot of time. I bought these 1” for the pink cheeks and these ½” black circles for the eyes. If you are only making a few, cutting them out by hand or with a cutting machine is no biggie.
OK, this will be the fastest tutorial I’ve ever done. Ha! Let’s get to it.
Print your pattern and cut out the pieces. There are two sizes of hand puppets, small (toddler) and large (grade-school-age children). The rest of the pieces are the same size for both puppets. Cut two 7.5”x8.5” rectangles for the small puppet or two 8.5”x9.5” for the large puppet from your light brown felt and sandwich them together. Trace your puppet pattern on the top.
Take to your sewing machine and sew on your traced line from one end (remember to back-stitch) to the other leaving the straight line at the bottom unsewn for your opening for the child's hand.
Cut out your puppet, leaving a ⅛” seam on the outside of your cutline. To get rid of your Frixion pen line, place a barrier fabric over the top and run a hot iron over that. The barrier fabric will prevent our felt from melting.
Trace the eyes, cheeks, and bow on your remaining felt pieces and cut out.
When you have all puppet pieces cut out and ready to go, gather your accessories together then let your little one go to town making it their own. I had my daughter who just turned seven make one.
When my daughter was making her puppet, my other two kids (eleven and thirteen) came along and asked if they could make one, too! Heck yes! This would be a great little craft to put together for your little one and their friends or maybe a class party.