Favorite Tool: Watercolor Pencils

Posted on December 19, 2013 by ccbooks

I haven’t done one of these posts in awhile! For both our children’s shows this year, we were very specific about colors and having the right shades for each story and environment. Much of the time, our initial sketches and planning for puppets is done quickly with a basic pencil and paper, but lately Genna and Amy have been adding color with these watercolor pencils.

What makes these different from regular colored pencils is the way you can brush over your picture with water to blend colors and create a smooth shade. We don’t always do that, but the colors add a lot to our puppet sketches, as you can see here.

Building Under the Canopy

Posted on December 16, 2013 by ccbooks

We’re in the midst of refurbishing old objects and building new ones for Under the Canopy, which Arts on the Horizon will produce in February. After a workshop production last summer, we learned a LOT about how babies respond to objects and what kinds of things capture their attention best. Here are a few photos of us at work as we build umbrella birds and caterpillars, ladder trees and butterflies.

Supplies waiting on the worktable.

Pieces for the umbrella bird, waiting to be glued on.

Pieces for the umbrella bird, all cut out and waiting to be glued on.

All glued or sewn on, now waiting for bird tails.

Amy and Genna at the worktable.

Genna trying out placements for the bird tails.

Building Fabulas Mayas

Posted on October 17, 2013 by ccbooks

We’ve been hard at work building lots and lots of puppets for our show Fabulas Mayas, which opens next week at GALA Hispanic Theatre. Here are a few pictures of the process:

Lots of paper mache mice waiting to be painted.

Snail’s base, getting a first coat of paint from Genna.

There are SO MANY shadow puppets in this show.

The head of a child puppet, waiting for hair.

Puppet Workshop Announcement!!

Posted on May 1, 2013 by ccbooks

The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet is a project that happened because a group of artists all read books by Shaun Tan and were inspired to create a new story. We hope that watching our puppet play inspires other people to create their own stories as well. To help that process along, we are thrilled to be able to present a PUPPET-MAKING WORKSHOP on Sunday, May 12 in collaboration with SCRAP DC.

Directly after the 2pm show, Karen Klein and Heather Bouley from SCRAP will lead a workshop on making puppets from recycled materials. This workshop is for all ages and is a perfect activity for families to do together. There are only 25 spots in the workshop due to space limitations, so buy your tickets today!

The Origin of the Puppet

Posted on April 6, 2013 by ccbooks

While some of the characters in this show, such as Kismet, have changed very little over the last year and a half, others have gone through lots of transformations. Darwin would probably be unimpressed with the random ways our puppets tend to mutate, as it tends to follow comments along the lines of “Does it look right?” rather than any natural selection. Here are some photos tracing the evolution of one object puppet, the Swirl Dancer.

I added the wood cutout to the melon baller. The way the circles at the top and bottom echoes the spiral is nice.

Painting the swirl blue helps and the purple yarn hair brings focus to the top circle. The little purple scarf adds color.

Puppets can be fragile. After a couple of early rehearsals, the wooden swirl broke off. We still liked the hair, but we wanted to give her a skirt–at this point we were all thinking of her as a dancer character. But a skirt made from what? A sponge? Paper party blowers?

Genna ended up making a skirt from a scrunchie like fabric and layering it with a sparkly filigree decoration.

She’s perhaps a bit more sparkly and princess-like than when she started out, but we like her!

What Can You Do With a Broken Umbrella?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by ccbooks

So many things, if you are a puppeteer! After taking apart LOTS of umbrellas for various puppet projects this winter, we have a much better understanding of how they work–and why they break so easily! Fortunately we can use the broken pieces in many different ways. Here are a few of them:

We take large broken umbrellas apart and use the spokes as controls for shadow puppets.

An in-progress shot of a puppet from Cabinets of Kismet that uses the joints of a broken umbrella.

And here it is again a little further along!

Building Kismet #4

Posted on March 6, 2013 by ccbooks

Our efforts have been focused on paper puppets for the past few weeks. With the help of Matthew McGee and puppeteers Heather Carter, Amy Kellett and Russell Matthews, we’ve created some new citizens of Paper World, out of scraps from SCRAP DC, local printers and the contents of the recycling bin.

Any guesses as to how these components might fit together to form a paper puppet?

Big or small, everything is made from paper!

Not too many tools needed–just a glue gun and scissors.

Two paper friends, ready to be animated by puppeteers.

Store Spotlight: Fragers Hardware

Posted on January 23, 2013 by ccbooks

Buying materials at a regular hardware store when you are a puppeteer is a process that can be awkward and frustrating. The fact is that you are often buying items which you are going to use in an unconventional fashion, and occasionally it is hard for hardware store people to accept that. Add to that the fact that I’m a woman, which apparently makes the employees of some places (cough, Logan Hardware, cough) automatically assume that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve gotten strange looks in many different hardware stores around the city, except for one.

That is Fragers Hardware, a landmark of Eastern Market that has been in business since 1920. They are located at 1115 Pennsylvania Ave SE and occupy three distinct buildings–a hardware store, paint store and equipment rental store. Whenever I go to Fragers, there is always someone free to answer questions or give advice and when I explain that I am a puppeteer looking for materials, they nod and say “Oh, cool!” They always have what I am looking for, or are able to order it easily. If you appreciate stores where everyone is given time and consideration, make this your source for hardware in D.C.

The hardware room, where we spend lots of time searching for that perfect size nut or bolt.

Aisle full of supplies for puppet projects or home repair.

We think this sign is entirely appropriate!

Store Spotlight: SCRAP DC

Posted on January 7, 2013 by ccbooks

In many ways, SCRAP DC is like your average craft or fabric store. There are paintbrushes and oil pastels, yarn and fabric by the yard. But there are also corks, odd electrical parts, wood samples and drapery tassels. And everything is far cheaper than you would find at a regular store. That’s because everything at SCRAP is secondhand and for a puppet-maker, there is no better supply store in town.

The front door at SCRAP.

The bulletin board full of announcements at SCRAP DC

SCRAP DC is located at 52 O St. NW, a short walk from NOMA-Galludet Metro station and right near the intersection of North Capitol St. and New York Ave. The materials they sell are all donated, so the stock changes often. If you are lucky, you’ll go in on a day when a box of high quality art supplies has come in and you can find $30 paintbrushes for $3. We tend to focus on the fabric and yarn, sewing supplies and scraps of wood and plastic which call out to be turned into puppets. For a teacher looking for project supplies, parents looking for ways to keep kids busy and artists on a budget, SCRAP is the place to go!

Paper, cardboard and boxes.

Boxes of trims and bolts of fabric.

Wall of fabric remnants at SCRAP DC.

Wit's End Puppets

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