Animal Hand Puppets

I loved hand puppets as a child, so I decided to make the clever girl some for her birthday.  Surprisingly, when I Googled hand puppets, I got a lot of finger puppet tutorials and some more marionnette-like puppets, but few actual hand puppets!  Finally, I found an adorable pattern for a bunny hand puppet from The Purl Bee.  I copied the actual pattern at 90% to make it a bit smaller for a kiddo hand but still big enough for an adult hand.  While the bunny was perfect, I wanted other animals too, so I just used the body of the bunny and went wild! 

The patterns called for wool felt, but I could not find any and used acrylic instead.  Here is my little bunny.  The cutest part is actually the tail, which of course I did not photograph, but it is a sweet little pom-pom tail in the pink felt. 

Then I started to get crazy and made a cat.  I thought a solid cat was not fun enough, so I made it a striped kitty.  There are stripes on the back of the tail, and you can see the embroidery stitches from the front. 

And here is the puppy dog!  Again, there are spots on the back of the tail.

I love these puppets.  I actually intend to make her more, but ran out of time before her birthday.  I have the materials though for a lion, elephant, monkey, and giraffe.  The options are endless! 

This project was very fun.  Mr. Clever Mom and I worked on it together in the evenings after the clever girl was in bed.  Yep, you read that right!  He helped!  I had him cutting out the felt while I sewed the pieces together.  He actually has the basic body pieces cut for the other animals I want to make! 

The clever girl has had such fun with these puppets.  Along with the puppets, I also made her a puppet theatre  and some "people" puppets.  A post about the "people" puppets will follow!