I went to the thrift store in search of wooden spoons when I was inspired by a pin on Pinterest. It had all these old wooden spoons painted as story book characters. Goldie locks and the Three Bears, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Ect. These are called “story spoons” and are basically little spoon puppets.
I thought about how often I see wooden spoons and utensils at thrift stores. So I decided I needed to do this project ASAP. It wasn’t until I was at Goodwill that I saw this old Napa Valley wine rack that I decided to make a full theater. This How-To is for making a puppet theater from this wine rack, and designing characters on wooden spoons. If you can’t find a wine rack similar to this one, you could probably use any kind of frame with a base. Use a wooden dowel rod to hang your curtain from.
What I used:
Wine Rack; most look pretty similar, try to find one that you can easily manipulate.
Red cloth; In this case it was an XL Poncho shirt. OR buy 1 yard of fabric.
Wooden spoons; I found six on this first thrift store trip, but the more you find, the more stories you can recreate. If you find something else that you think you could paint character’s on, go for it. Kid’s love funky crafts like this.
Acrylic Paint; I just used some cheap paint that I had left over from other projects.
Felt; Also left over, I used about half of a regular 8.5 x 11 sheet of brown felt.
Sticky-back Foam; I used half a sheet of this as well. This is the peel-off kind that is in the kid’s craft section with the felt.
The Puppets
I wanted to do our family first, then choose from his favorite stories. The puppet spoons are (from right to left): Tessa (our dog), Oliver (our son), Myself, and Clayton (my husband). Then I chose his very favorite book Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. I made the two characters; Baby Llama and Mama Llama.
Luckily the spoons that I found were all in great condition, no stains or chips in them, so I didn’t need to sand them.
I began by just painting the flesh tones on the spoons for each character. By the time I finished all of them, the first was already dry. I continued painting them in segments so that I could finish all of them at the same time. I painted just the indented areas on the human character’s spoons. On the animal characters I painted the backs and further down the handle.
I worked by adding the largest of details first, one by one. Doing every puppet’s base hair color, and then the main colors for each character’s clothing. Many of the story spoons that I’ve seen on Pinterest have actual sewn doll clothing. I decided not to do this for ours because Ollie is very young, and doesn’t really care if the clothes are real. If I ever add real clothes to them, I’ll make a tutorial and link it here.
The Details
Before painting the clothes on the characters, I wrapped a piece of tape (or two) on the lower area of the handles. This was meant to separate the feet from the legs.
After all the major areas were painted, I drew lightly with a pencil where the smaller details should go. For the story characters, I tried to use the book as a reference for their features.
To achieve these small details I used a very small fine paint brush, a variation of fine tip markers, and a chalk marker (for the white details). I worked my way through each character the same way I did with the larger areas. First with the small paint brush, then the colored markers, then the chalk marker, and finally a very fine black tip marker.
When I finished all of these fine details, all of my human puppets were complete! My animals still needed there ears though, so I drank some coffee and brainstormed.
The Ears
To create the ears on these furry friends, I used only two materials. Felt, and Sticky foam. I wanted to avoid using glue because I’m too messy with it. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to achieve a crisp, clean look. However, I didn’t want to sew the ears, because I want these story spoons to be easy to recreate in the future.
AND THAT’S WHEN IT HIT ME! Sticky foam!! I figured this would easiest explained using photos, so I tried to capture each step.
Firstly, I traced the head of the animal characters on the peel off side of the sticky foam. I positioned about where I wanted the ears to be. Using the book as a reference, I attempted to get the shape of the ears.
That’s it!
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Oliver really liked the puppets, we played with them immediately. He quickly identified the Daddy spoon, and inquired about the others. We named them off together and he was intrigued by his own spoon character! I’m really pleased with the way they turned out and I think the whole spoon process only took about two hours. And that’s including my brainstorming coffee break!
I’m a little biased, but I think this is a great looking bunch of spoons if I ever saw one.
The Puppet Theater
The Wine Rack
Again, This theater is made from an old wine rack that had removable poles. Most wine racks are structured pretty similarly, and I see them ALL the time in thrift stores. But of course, your process will probably be different than mine, and that’s okay! If you need help brainstorming ideas on transforming your wine rack into a puppet theater, email me! I’d be more than happy to help give you some ideas. A good curtain solution if you don’t have one with removable bars like mine, is a dowel rod. Many wine racks I’ve seen are wooden, you could easily drill a small hole in each side and side a dowel rod in!
I started out by removing all of the metal bars, and then determined which ones I would actually need to keep. These were the two bottom bars, for structural integrity, and a lower bar for the bottom of the stage. I also wanted a bar across the very top, but there wasn’t originally a bar there so we had to drill a hole in each side. That’s really the only thing I needed to do to make this into a puppet theater frame! I may add some stenciling or paint later on, but as of now, I really like the basic wooden look.
The Curtains
For the curtains, I scored pretty big with this XL poncho shirt. It was in a BOGO Free sale at Goodwill, and I had already picked out a cute top to wear, so this shirt was free! See my post here on how to better find specific items in messy thrift stores. But its no sweat if you can’t find a solid red XL shirt. Hop on over to the fabric store and buy a yard of the fabric of your choice. I originally cut the shirt in half and each curtain panel was 12″w x 24″h. This was way too long and I cut 8″ off of the bottom of each panel. This worked out well because I was able to sew these two 8″ pieces together and create the bottom curtain panel! Scroll through this whole process here:
Cut the back off, so you're working with a single layer of fabric.
The Result
That’s it, folks! For just a few bucks ($6.00 in my case) you can have a great quality puppet theater for your little one! Oliver is really enjoying his way more than I actually anticipated. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions about this project, if you can’t find a wine rack but have some ideas about another piece. Or if you want to brainstorm on another Thrift Store make over project! That is why I am here! To see more DIY ideas like this, follow me on Pinterest!
Who should my next story spoon characters be? Let me know in the comments!
Stay Thrifty, my friends!
Megan@ThriftingAdrift