I´ve been looking at many puppets in the gallery on puppetsandstuff.com On some of the pictures are the puppets on its stand on the table. Nobody is holding the puppet. How can you people make the mouth like that, its closed in normal position. My puppets just gap their mouth like they want some food or something.
Do you have some explainations for me people?

Have you ever seen the big metal clips in the office stores?  I am not sure what they are called but they are most often black metal with silver "handles".  Clip one of these inside the mouth to hold it closed. You can try a cloths pin or two to do the same thing but it might not be strong enough.

Another alternative is to to use straight pins on the outside to hold the mouth together.  You can often hide them in the fabric.

Found an image and example link of what I was talking about above: http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/838056/Office-Depot-Large-Binder-Clips-2/

Hm... I was wondering too.
But I can't imagine how to clip that inside the mouth to hold it closed...
Could you please clarify? I was thinking of putting that clip on in the place where mouthplate folds, but...

Iza

The Binder Clip takes the place of your hand.  You are right Iza you simply put it on the fold of the mouth plate on the inside of the puppet.  It has to be one of the large over sized ones.

Great! Thank you for your quick and good answer!

hiya stonemask,
i just use a wire coat hanger and fold it into a knid of paperclip shape to slot over the mouth of the puppet to keep it closed. i got the idea from the "Adding facial features to your puppet characters" tutorial over at www.projectpuppet.com. theres a photo of it under the 'first things first' heading.
i think its great because you can adjust the wire so the mouth will be slightly open or closed or whatever position you like which helps those photo oppertunities.

hope that helps you

cheers
Spam 

Hello,
I use foam board for my puppet mouths and have tried the binder clamps but found out that they put a dent in the mouth they are really strong. I like the one that Na mentions that is found on the Project Puppet website.


Angel

I use a coat hanger bent like the one from www.projectpuppet.com and it works really well.

The two lobes go on the top mouthplate and the single goes on the bottom mouthplate.

These are all good ideas  I just tell my puppets to be quiet and sit still. Then if that doesn't work I use the clamps.

Billy D.

Yes or hot glue LOL