I had by now hoped to post images of my first new shadow puppet of the year, as it will be sold. If you remember, I’d mentioned I had tried polyprop, then moved back to document folders. I liked the latter material so much, that I decided to find out what plastic they use for document folders. It turns out that it’s what I started off with: polypropylene. The sheets I got though were too thick to cut out easily, which is why I moved away from it. However, since I looked into suppliers for this plastic I decided to go back to my list and rethink it. There were two suppliers who I looked into where it seemed like they sold the right product. One is in Queensland, making shipping quite expensive, although their price per sheet was reasonable: but they were also quite snotty in response to my basic questions.

The other is a Victorian based company, Megara. I liked the fact that they offer translucent and opaque sheets, but also are environmentally friendly. Their plastics are recyclable! I contacted them and got a quote, and found good rates - shipping is also fairly cheap ($30 for orders under $300 or thereabouts). I put in an order and got a huge shipment of plastic sheets.

Which leads me to my point: I ordered sheets which were the thinnest I could get. The last batch from a different supplier (they only had one thickness) was too thick. And it was 0.8mm (0.03 inches) thick. The thinnest from Megara is 0.38mm, with the next one up being 0.6mm. Hedging my bets, I went with the thinnest, hoping that 0.6mm was also too thick.

When the shipment arrived, I discovered that light and sturdy as the plastic is, at that thickness it’s also extremely floppy. The only way to store them is to lie them flat on my desk. Fortunately the paper wrapping it came in provides an excellent background for any photos I take for tutorials and patterns. Unfortunately, the thickness is presenting its own problems.

When I upscaled the pattern for the design last time, it turned out that the hollow head became floppy. In order to prevent this issue, I simply relocated the rods and that took care of that. But I still wasn’t happy about size, and so when I got my new plastic sheets I thought I’d resize again. I’ve tried three different sizes now, and the one at which I’m the happiest at using, is also the one which has the most floppiness. Even the smaller sizes are causing the head to deform when holding it up. The combined weight of the bottom pieces of the puppet and the hollowness of the head create a considerable distortion to the design. And this is nothing to say of the fact that further articulation and the weight of additional brads also cause further sagging.

I am left with two options: redesign the head - either by filling in the hole or making the oval shape thicker - or keep the puppet at a smaller size. Neither of which I’m happy with. A third option is obtaining some thicker plastic sheets in the hopes that the slight addition of bulk will help keep the puppet in shape - the document folders are only slightly thicker than the new sheets.

This is frustrating me a lot because I’m ready to move on and start building these puppets; but each day I try something new to solve the problem and only get set back again.

What makes things worse is that I requested some info from the supplier about something else, towards the end of December. I hadn’t expected a reply straight away, seeing as how most people were on holidays, and I didn’t. But I did receive a reply at the start of the month, explaining the delay and stating they’d have answers for me shortly. I’ve been waiting three weeks, with a prompting email from me about a week or so ago. This is hamstringing me further as the first puppet I want to produce and sell is completely reliant on the answers to my questions.

At this rate, I’ll be surprised if I have anything new to showcase by March.