When making a sock puppet, you should first consider the basics of puppet design. Sock puppets can be great activities for both children and families, but also a good exercise for new puppet makers.

The following is a set of instructions based on an experimentation of the sock puppet concept - it’s not made out of a traditional sock puppet, or using traditional construction methods. The building technique here is to create a mouth piece, which is then attached to a long handless sleeve that fits on your arm. If you would like to use a traditional method, skip to the bottom of this post, where there is a link to another site that has a good how-to on making a sock puppet in the normal way.

UPDATE: Ok, I’ll admit this isn’t the greatest tutorial in the world. Maybe one day I’ll make a new one, but in the meantime…

(An extended post on what kind of materials are used with sock puppets can be found here) 

Materials

You will need the following:

• A thin foam sheet (the one I used came from a Spotlight packet of three A4 sheets, about 5mm thick)
• Material to cover the inside of the mouth, as well as the outside, in a colour of your choice
• Hot glue and hot glue gun (if you’re averse to using hot glue, try PVA and/or an aerosol glue)
• Aerosol glue
• PVA
• Material to make the sleeve or neck of the puppet - enough to make a evening gown-length glove
• A small polystyrene ball
• Paints
• Varnish or nail polish
• Sewing needles, and thread to match your sleeve/neck material
• Any other decorations or accessories to create a puppet character (ie. clothes, necklaces, etc.)

Make the mouth

Step One

I’m going to show you a mouth-making technique that actually comes from the instructions in The Foam Book, and which I described in less detail here. These instructions will help you build a mouth for your sock puppet which is both flexible and sturdy.

First, you need to make a pattern for the mouth. Measure the width of your hand, and add a couple of centimetres (or an inch) onto it for a margin of additional space. This width will become the width of your pattern - draw it onto a piece of paper in the form of a straight line; the line will additionally double as the ‘hinge’ mark (read on for clarification).

Now you have the width; but what about depth? Hold your thumb to your index finger - you will see you’ve already got your hand in the ‘mouth’ position (otherwise known as the duck hand shadow shape!). Measure from your fingertips to your large knuckles adjoining your hand. This measurement will be the length of each jaw (or the radius for maths geeks). Use this radius to draw a rectangle out from each side of the ‘hinge’ mark. You should now have one large rectangle, within it, two rectangles.

Cut out the pattern, and fold it in half, along the ‘hinge’ marked line. Hold it between your touching thumb and index finger - you now have the shape of your mouth! If you don’t like the size, start again, making adjustments as necessary. Note: normally you would round the edges of each jaw to make a nice looking mouth, but I found for this experimental sock puppet, it was necessary to have square jaws - you may however, feel it necessary to round the corners of the hinge area. You’ll see why later on.

Step Two

Once you have the pattern, trace it onto your foam sheet. (You can see mine above). Cut out the larger shape, and then make a score across the hinge line in the middle. Be sure not to cut all the way through the line, but only lightly score it. This will help the mouth fold correctly into two jaws.

Step Three

Take the material you’ve got for covering the mouth - this will help ensure the mouth stays sturdy after use, and is also a reinforcement for the hinge - and lay out the foam sheet piece onto it. You will want to cover the BACK OF THE MOUTH first; you’ll see why soon.

Use the aerosol spray to glue the back of the mouth down, making sure to close the jaw while doing so; gluing it to the material while the jaws are open means less stretch later when you want to open and close the mouth, and therefore more wear and tear on the material. Once the glue has dried, cut the excess material off, but glue a small margin of it to the other side of the mouth as a ‘hem’. You may find it easier to use hot glue here, instead of the spray.

Step Four

Now lay this foam piece over the material again, this time covering the INSIDE of the mouth. (Or the blank area of the foam, shown above) Glue the excess onto the other side, the back of the mouth. The reason why you glue the inside of the mouth first is because otherwise, if you did it the other way around, you would see the excess material glued inside the mouth; this way the excess material is only seen on the back of the mouth, and only then by a curious puppeteer looking inside the sock puppet. You should glue over the edges of the excess material, just to ensure it doesn’t come apart.

Step Five

Ok, so now you have the jaws of the mouth. But it’s not so easy to hold onto, so we need to make some finger tubes. Take your spare foam sheet - you should have only used a third or half of the A4 sheet for the mouth - and cut long strips, about two centimetres (one inch) wide.

The length is up to you; you need one strip to make a tube for your thumb, and one strip to fit at least two or three of your fingers. So wrap the strips around your fingers/thumb and choose the most comfortable length. Glue the ends of each strip together, to make tubes.

Take the thumb tube, and glue it onto the back of the bottom jaw (it doesn’t matter which jaw is which, unless you have made the mouth with an over- or underbite), wherever it is comfortable for you to operate the mouth easily with. Take the finger tube, and glue it onto the back of the top jaw.

Make sure the tubes are securely attached; if you have some spare material, glue a piece over the top of each tube, and down onto the back of the jaw. This will ensure that the entire tube is housed inside the material, and won’t easily come apart later.

Step Six

To even greatly assure yourself of sturdiness, coat the entire back of the mouth with PVA. The glue won’t affect the flexibility of the mouth, but will make the whole thing much more durable. DON’T cover the inside of the mouth.

At this stage, you can add a tongue if you want - a small piece of material of a different colour, glued to the inside of the mouth, at the centre of the hinge. I didn’t add a tongue in this example.

Once the PVA has dried completely (it has gone fully clear, with no white left), take your mouth and test it out. (Your mouth won’t look as thick as this one; I used a different kind of foam for this sock puppet, but the instructions given here were used to the letter for this mouth, using exactly the same materials as described here. You can see in the linked image, the PVA is still drying, and the mouth is resting on a doll’s stand. There is quite a difference in thicknesses of the mouths)

Make the sleeve

Step Seven

The sleeve is actually very simple. Take a large piece of paper - A3 or A0, but if you don’t have anything that big, stick two sheets of A4 paper together - and draw an outline of your arm and hand. Ensure your fingers are together, and draw the outline from your elbow to the other side of your elbow.

Take this pattern, and add on about 4 or 5 centimetres (a couple of inches), following the outline of the arm - you’ll find that you will need this extra space later on, so don’t make the pattern too small.

Cut out the pattern, and lay it out on your sleeve material, pin it to the material, and cut the material out based on this pattern (double the material over to make it easier). You should now have two pieces of sleeve material in an arm shape.

Step Eight

Take your needle and thread, and sew the right side of the arm pattern - but only sew up to where the closest knuckle would be. Sew the left side of the arm, again only to the knuckle. You want to stop sewing there, because you will be attaching the mouth piece to this part of the material, and not sewing all the way up the sleeve will ensure that you have the ideal amount of flexibility to open and close the mouth. (I learned the hard way, and sewed all the way up. When I added the mouth later, I found that I couldn’t open the mouth - only a little - and had to cut these places where I shouldn’t have sewn)

On the picture above, you will see pink lines marked as to where not to sew.

Once you’ve sewn down the right and left sides, hem the end of the sleeve, as well as the tops of the sleeve (around the hand, where you didn’t sew before, and the tips of the fingers). The hem will ensure that nothing unravels later on. Try on your sleeve, and if it doesn’t fit, start again, this time making the pattern wider.

Attach the mouth

Step Nine

Take your mouth piece, and lay it out on your table, with the back of the mouth facing up. Now here’s the tricky part - or at least to explain - take the sleeve, and have a look at the hand area; where the pink lines are marked in the above photo. Spread the two sides apart, so that it looks like the sleeve is slit halfway down the middle.

Place it onto the back of the mouth - it should cover the back completely, and the edges of the sleeve should match up to the edges of the mouth. Glue these edges of the sleeve down onto the back of the mouth.

It should look like this –>

Flip the whole thing over, and the inside of the mouth/front of the sleeve should look like this:

Try on the sock puppet - put your arm in the sleeve, all the way up to the mouth. If you close the jaws together, you will be able to get your fingers to go into the finger tube, and the thumb into the thumb tube. Try opening and closing the mouth - it’s easy isn’t it?

Make the eyes

Step Ten

Take your polystyrene ball and cut it in half. Follow the instructions here on how to paint eyes.

Then glue the eyes to the top jaw of the puppet, onto the sleeve material.

Ensure the eyes are angled correctly by folding the mouth over (kind of looks like a snake, doesn’t it?):

Add accessories

Step Eleven

 I think my sock puppet looks pretty boring - so I’ve added a piece of pink boa around its neck.

You can add other things, like eyebrows, hair, clothes, etc.

You can change the style or look of the character by using different materials, accessories, and even by changing the shape of the sleeve. Don’t want it to be arm-fitting? Then widen the pattern. You can widen it at the bottom, near the elbow, for a more ’skirty’ look; or widen it at the hand, for a less tapered look.

Please let me know if you’d like any help with the instructions provided, or if anything needs to be made clearer - leave a comment if you do!

Traditional sock puppets

Here’s a great place for a traditional sock puppet instructional. I haven’t made a sock puppet using this guide yet, but when I do, I’ll post an example picture.