See previous post here about the Challenge.

Taking a bit of a mental break from SOP stuff, I decided it was time to work more on the new shadow puppet products. A lot of changes of my original plans has occured: I’ve decided against brooches in its entirety. I find working with plastic at such a small scale to be very frustrating and all of my attempts at making it work have ended in something I’d definitely not be happy selling. … Which, as it turns out, is just fine. Because I have a replacement idea that is ten times better and something I’d be more willing to make. Not much to say on this at the moment, because I’m still thinking it through.

I’ve also decided against wall art. For the moment it’s going in the ‘too hard basket’, although I will be looking at ways of making shadow puppet scenery to go along with the rods and screens I hope to have available as puppet supplies.

However, here again I have a replacement idea. I had hoped to have something to show as an example, but alas today’s little crafting experiment was a major screw up (it doesn’t help that I simply dived right in without thinking things through, and this particular object needs thought). I will be trying again though and as it’s truly a ‘crafting’ item, I hope to post something worthy of blogging before June is out.

The last five photos on this Flickr page is what I have been working on; you can compare the old version of the puppets to the new.

Success in other ways though. I got my white plastic and made up a better version of the girl shadow puppet that I’ve been experimenting with. There’s a video at the end of the post, which shows just how well it works. One thing I absolutely love - other than this solving my clear-edge problem, see above link - is that even though the plastic is quite clearly white, once the arms move behind the body it takes on as much of the colour of the body as the body itself. It’s like liquid colour!

The white plastic is a bit thicker than what I had used for the body, so there is a slight drop in flexibility and fluidity. You can see the photos too, I tried different patterns. It’s interesting in doing this, as I discovered that an all-patterned puppet looks a bit weird; in my photos I just reused the white puppet parts, and so on my wall I have the original all-patterned test stuck up. You can judge for yourself how different the two versions look. (To the right of the puppets you’ll see my mini experiment in wall art; different layers of plastic cut in such a way it’s a boat on an ocean. To the right of that, a little piece of white plastic with words written on: “this works!” I was testing whether or not washable markers would write on the plastic, and that’s a reminder that it does indeed, work.) This discovery has made me develop a few basic rules about the way in which I use patterns/colours, so that the design doesn’t get overwhelming visually.

I have attempted new rod attachments using cable ties. It’s a very simple idea and very effective, I found the ties to be easy to attach, strong, and didn’t rip the puppet. However, it removed any and all ability to ‘reverse’ the puppet - in other words, cable ties weren’t flexible enough to allow the rods to rotate within. I’m still trying to figure out how to upgrade the rod attachment but options are limited; and I’m still trying to find a reasonable glue for magnets and such. (I have considered magnetic tape, which is like sticky tape only magnetic, but it doesn’t look as professional as round magnets)

Besides this, I’m also daily thinking about character designs, and already have a basic theme developed. I’m working through this theme and have picked out a number of good ideas for characters. Once they’ve all been decided on, I’ll get to work on actually making the designs; and from there it’s all about building!