I started covering half a foam ball (for a nose) on my first "muppet style" puppet, using the technique outlined in the famous expert village videos, the extra fabric on the back made it sit up weirdly and glue on REALLY badly!, there had to be a better way. The next puppet got a piece sliced off his nose to make it look better, not sit up away from the face. Once I cut that with a craft knife I thought, "why not cut it again! To see where I'm going with this, check out the sub album in my Gallery for captioned pictures, that walk you through my way of dealing with the extra fabric.

Once you use this method gluing becomes a lot easier as there is no extra fabric in the way, however, as I was working with fur I decided to sew the eyes and nose on with a large curved needle. This was a lot less frightening. If I got it wrong I only had to unpick and start again, not throw away the whole messy project. I highly recommend this way. The eyes are covered in old T shirt to get lots of stretch. I started out using this method for the nose and moved to the eyes to cover that "polystyrene cell" texture. Being able to sew on the balls is a bonus!

The main drawback is that if the eye fabric gets dirty it could be difficult to get clean. I'm going to find out because the puppet has become the most prized possession of my 2 and a 1/2 year old daughter.(She'd have taken no for an answer but I saw no reason to be too precious about him, there will be more where he came from. I'm still teaching her to respect him though) At the absolute worst, I can cut off/unpick the eyes and make new ones, (not great if you are selling puppets to others.)

So pro's and cons. but check out the pics and captions for your self, it's not hard to imagine other uses for this method.

Scoob

Great Job on the tutorial....................... I like this method, Thanks for sharing. Everybody check out this tutorial in Scubasteves Gallery.

http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php?action=gallery&g2_itemId=6301

Billy D.

Thanks for posting the link Billly, I've still a bit to learn about the forum.

One more, selfish request. If you use  or try this method let me know (by posting to this thread so I'll be emailed) how it goes. Perhaps you'll find I'm doing something a bit redundant or another step to improve it further. Of course it's just nice to know that someone tried it and how it went.
Like I said, a bit selfish but I found it a lot better than what I'd been doing.

Hi,

great tutorial! Thx for taking the time... it realy shows us how to work step by step!

Johan

Thanks for sharing your new discovery with everyone....I know it will be put to great use. 

Daryl H