On Thursday I received some goodies in the mail: two pieces of what I had hoped was my new material for making shadow puppets. Unfortunately, it’s probably not what I’m going to use. At the bottom of this post, you’ll see what I have made over the weekend, but before we get to that, a bit about what I have tried using:

I decided that I needed to ‘up’ the professionalism of my shadow puppet materials, and at first was at a loss as to what to use. Thankfully I had ordered a copy of Shadow Puppets & Shadow Play by David Currell a while back that I never got around to reading. I really should, because I discovered quite a few ideas in there that I’d never ever thought about. Mainly I was interested in learning more about using plastic, since that’s something I saw at Finders Keepers and was inspired by.

Currell’s book mentions something called ‘Plasticard’ and a quick google came up with two problems: the plastic is not called that (it’s a brand name, obviously); and it’s only available at very rare hobby shops in Australia and often not in sheet form (it’s used for model trains, and hence in different shapes). I really didn’t want to have problems finding a supplier, and even though I could find plenty of industrial suppliers of plastics, none of them had reasonable info about the item in question.

Plan B. Look for a different type of material. But what one? Taking a break in the lounge one afternoon, I picked up on something that had completely been overlooked. On a side table was sitting a gift card, an object that had been lying around for days and that I’d noticed but not really seen. Forest for the trees certainly: I started to wonder what gift cards were made out of. They were the right thickness, the right sturdiness, and would most likely be a decent substitute for Plasticard.

What I discovered is ‘polypropylene’ and fortunately for me there are heaps of Aussie suppliers around. Even better is that polyprop comes in clear, colours, and even translucent colours! It’s relatively cheap, and I found one arts/crafts store in Geelong (about an hour from Melbourne) who sells sheets in A1 sizes. Perfect!

And so on Thursday I got two sheets - one clear and one white - to do some testing with. I also bought a few bits and pieces to try out some ideas with.

Unfortunately, very little from there has been successful. I’ve since discovered that glues do not take to polyprop (one of the reasons why it’s such a well-liked material is that it can’t be glued), and only after trying several different glues and then googling did I learn that. Hot glue apparently works well, but my gun has disappeared into the morass of crap in my room. Super glue works well, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to use to back the plastic with patterned papers; but would probably use it to attach magnets or brooch pins.

The plastic itself isn’t too hard to cut, but it doesn’t like tiny details. It’s too thick to cut with a scalpel easily, and my scissors are fine… but they can’t handle corners on this plastic; my hand cut design at the size I wanted looks pretty amateurish. Any details that I’d want to do, like on my mermaid shadow puppet, I would have a hard time doing even if I increased the size of the puppet. I could try and find someone to cut the pieces for me, at which point I’m either no longer making 50% of the puppet, or there is no redundancy built in if the person went away/had problems/whatever.

Joining the pieces was a nightmare. I had this brilliant idea of using grommets (or eyelets, like what you use for holes on belts or corsets) for joints but discovered that using eyelet pliers squashes the eyelet before it can go halfway through the plastic; and the hammering method would only make a dent in my desk. I thought maybe I could try using snap buttons as a weird new joint, but the button part was too short to go through two pieces of plastic. I settled on brads just so I could see if I could get even one example product finished. Brads aren’t ideal for kids, so I still need a better solution.

I had a look at Etsy and what kind of plastic brooches were available. A few were a bit handmade looking, so I thought maybe I could get away with my cutting job. But honestly, I’m so frustrated with the way the plastic works that it’s hard to see how this would work on a large production scale. Part of the reason I like shadow puppets is that they’re quick and easy to make. And although I’ve not been ‘making’ but been ‘testing’ instead, my ideal materials are ones you don’t have to force into obeyance. I like the cheapness of the polyprop - I could get several large puppets out of a $10 sheet - and even the look of it… but in order to do what I want to do, I’m not entirely sure that plastic is for me.

Here’s what I ended up with after two days of fiddling: an example brooch. The design is the ’signature’ for the new collection (yeah, that’s what I’m calling it now), a girl. There is a boy version too, but I only tried to make the girl. The idea with the brooches is to change the design on whim, and so the girl can be seen as a whole figure; or you can ‘knock her head off’ . The hope was to have a hidden message/image revealed when you move the head. I was trying to test it by having my name appear (like a cute little name tag) but as I discovered above, doing lettering like that was impossible. The brooch is also 50% bigger than intended because I was trying to work out at what size lettering would work. I would never wear something this big, so it’s unlikely that the design will end up like this anyway. Especially since my intention wasn’t to use white, but to have coloured or patterned designs for the brooches… but of course, that means finding my glue gun. Or I could scrap using my lovely patterned papers (which are expensive, but I like the look of) and just use single colour translucent plastics and piece them together to create a coloured design (making for less intricate designs in themselves, and I’d rather the patterned papers. Although the minimalist in me is thinking that maybe I could pare back on the designs).

At the end of last night, I was so frustrated with how the brooch was turning out that I decided I needed to do a proper shadow puppet design to see if my concerns also held out for the fluidity of movement. (This took me one hour to cut and join) One thing I noticed in trying out the different joints is that the plastic doesn’t move as smoothly as the laminated versions I have made in the past. My fears were not allayed: this dragon puppet, based on my latest design which died at Finders Keepers (see above), just doesn’t move properly. The pieces get stuck in the middle, and whilst I could coax a rough figure eight movement out of it, the plastic simply isn’t good enough to have decent fluidity. (Ignoring the fact the rods are temporarily taped on, they are at least in the correct position for proper movement)

Somehow I have to find a balance between ‘designer art’ and ‘functional puppet’, and polypropylene just isn’t it. … I think I’ll be trying out acetate next. Although I already have severe doubts about that one too.