Good fabric for puppet clothes needs to be thin and stretchy. Spandex 4 way stretch (sometimes called Lycra) is a good choice. There are thicker and thinner kinds, for a t-shirt or a jacket, for example. Spandex comes in many colors and even in prints, but I have not been able to find puppet scale printed spandex. So I spent some time researching how to do it myself and finally figured it out.

Tools and materials for this project:

• Spandex 4-way stretch fabric (or any other fabric) – we have a few spandex colors in stock at morezmore.com.
• Delta Creative Ceramcoat Textile Medium (M00604) – this is an acrylic clear medium that turns any acrylic paint into a fabric paint. In other words, thin acrylic paint lines stay put on the fabric instead of bleeding out. This is awesome, because I don’t want to buy 30 colors of fabric paints, I can just use my own acrylics for the tiny amounts I will need once in a blue moon. For this project I mixed a drop of Delta with a drop of acrylic paint and painted over spandex (unprepared in any way) and it worked fine.
• Regular acrylic paints – black and white
• Fine liner brush (M00966)
• Silicone mixing pots. I like these because they are reusable – they can be wiped clean, paint does not stick to them. If the paint dries there, it is even easier, just peel it off (M01348)
• a ruler and a pencil
• divider for measuring off the distance between initial dots (M00944)

The process is on the photos below. Pattern for yoga pants – see “Simple pants” post below. Honey bees was my daughter’s idea. As I frequently do first time, I was working quick and dirty, it can be improved – especially my measurements and marks on the fabric, but this is a good proof of concept. I am very excited about possibilities!

Hope it is useful 🙂
Update. I used the same technique on making Woolinda’s sweatshirt.

Armabones are small 3D-printed connector blocks designed for building wire armatures.

Each Armabone has eight carefully arranged holes: four on the front face, two on the top, and two on the side. The holes follow separate, non-intersecting paths, allowing several wires to pass through the block without colliding inside.

The paired holes also have a small directional slope on the edges facing one another. As two wires emerge and are brought together beneath shrink tubing, the slope allows them to converge gradually rather than bending sharply at the openings. This creates cleaner wire routes and reduces concentrated stress at the exit points.

Armabones can be used for felted figures, stop-motion puppets, clay sculptures, animals, birds, fantasy creatures, and other small poseable structures.

The name comes from the old use of the word bones for dice. Armabones resemble tiny dice, and they become the structural “bones” of the armature.
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Hands Made with Sugru Moldable Silicone Putty.

Hi, friends!

Next item from my “Brilliant Idea To Do List”: Check out Sugru.

Yes, I have this list, and yes, it is called Brilliant Idea. Whenever I have an idea, I write it down and later, sometimes much later, I get to it. Not all things that come out from this list are brilliant, of course. But this one is!
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