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  • Silhouette puppets of beyonce on a white horse with Kamala Harris behind her holding an American flag

    Tricks and Techniques

    Puppets for a cause

    October 26, 2024November 2, 2024

    My most recent fun with silhouette (shadow) puppets has been using them as magnetic puppets. You can create a magnetic board by covering a metal sheet with thin paper and attach the puppets with magnetic

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  • silhouette puppets of family gathering with three people talking, a cat, and a man holding up a child

    Family history

    Make memories with family puppets during the holidays!

    November 13, 2023November 14, 2023

    If you think that shadow puppets can only be used for shadow puppetry, you are wrong! Among the many puppets with patterns in our Printable Library I have used the puppets above not only in

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  • silhouette puppets of Joseph and Mary on a stand with a phone and laptop.

    How to

    Stop motion puppets for the holidays

    December 17, 2022October 27, 2024

      Joseph and Mary marveling at the miracle of Mary’s pregnancy In 2020 I made patterns available to act out the Nativity story as a shadow play. This advent season I am sharing just a

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  • Silhouette puppets showing a man holding the reigns of a horse, which pulls a covered wagon with a woman on the front seat holding a little child.

    American history

    Local history tableaus

    October 5, 2022February 3, 2023

    There are 22 places in the United States that are called Lawrence. But only one of them got that name because the original one, Maidenhead, was thought to be too embarrassing for ladies. On the

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  • Puppet of Harriet Tubman sitting on a galloping hors

    Black history

    Riding a galloping horse

    May 8, 2021May 16, 2021

    Shadow puppetry offers opportunities to act out stories from the Underground Railroad, the network of free Blacks, Quakers, and abolitionists who helped men, women, and children escape slavery in the decades prior to the Civil

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  • Silhouette puppet of a wolf with movable jaw, front and back

    How to

    How to make puppet rods with duct or painters tape

    March 23, 2020March 24, 2020

    In this instructional video I am showing you how to make a silhouette or shadow puppet using a cheap and sturdy alternative for rods that are attached to the puppets with velcro. The instructions are

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  • shadow puppets of man riding a horse and wagon

    Tricks and Techniques

    Riding a horse and wagon

    February 9, 2020September 11, 2022

    If you want to act out stories from the Underground Railroad or other stories in which puppets need transportation, you may want to use a horse and wagon. In our printable library you will find

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  • Greek mythology

    Using an Overhead Projector for Shadow Puppetry

    December 2, 2018May 24, 2021

    If you are doing a shadow puppetry performance for larger audiences, using an overhead projector as the light source has several advantages. The light is stronger than traditional lamps and is distributed more evenly over

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  • Shadow puppet screen showing a man kissing a life size puppet, project from an overhead project.

    Tricks and Techniques

    Going Bigger: Using Masks and Direct Projection

    December 1, 2018July 15, 2019

    If you are using an overhead projector and big screen and want to have some variety in size (for instance to emphasize the difference between gods and mortals) there are two ways of doing so.

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