How to Make a Sock Puppet
In an effort to amaze my children with my puppet making abilities I made this puppet from one of my old socks and now I am going to show you how I did it. You can watch the video or follow along with the pictures below.
The only tools needed for this project are a scissors, and a heat gun.
The main ingredient of this puppet is a sock, pick a sock that fits your hand and has some nice puppet like texture. Be careful not to pick a sock you are going to miss, as I did. I used one of my old sock and I love the puppet is has become, but I have to admit I also miss my socks.
The other materials I used are some felt, an old cereal box, a couple googly eyes and 2 wooden balls.
To start I flattened a cereal box and traced my fingers on one of the seams to make the shape of a mouth. I am using the cereal box paperboard to stiffen the mouth so it’s not as floppy as the rest of the sock. Test fit and trim the paperboard as needed.
After doing some final trimming to size I then cut a piece of felt slightly larger than the cardboard mouth. I then used my hot glue gun to glue the felt to the the paperboard mouth.
Again I did a little test fitting and finally it’s time to glue in the mouth. I applied glue to the back of the mouth and held it in position till it was dry. Now this was a thick sock that isolated my hand from the hot glue. I would not attach the mouth this way with a thinner sock, I would have either used a lower temp glue or not have my hand so close to the hot glue.
I apply a seam of glue around the mouth to keep looking good and not show the layer of felt or paperboard.
Now the finish touch is the eyes. I had 1” wooden balls in my pile of craft parts so I used those, I was originally looking for ping pong balls. I glued the wooden balls on the top of the puppet, by just shooting some hot glue on the sock and then pressing the ball on.
The googly eyes went on much the same way. As you can see a little glue and stick on a googly eye.
And that’s it the puppet is complete. Very simple but I like it. And, I assume that sooner or later my kids will stop being annoyed as I walk around the house talking in puppet voices.
