How to Insert a Puppet Mouth Board

A puppet's mouth board is made by a puppet designer out of hard cardboard and rubber cement. The mouth board serves multiple purposes. It allows the puppeteer to make the puppet "talk," and it gives the puppet a more realistic, stable mouth. The mouth board of a puppet also helps hold the puppeteer's hand in place when he uses the puppet. Follow these steps to insert your handmade puppet mouth board into a puppet.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Puppet mouth board
• Puppet
• Scissors

1. Look at your puppet's face and find an appropriate placement for the puppet mouth board. Where you put the mouth board of the puppet is up to you, but in most cases, you will want to put the puppet mouth board centered in the lower third of your puppet's face.

2. Use scissors to cut a line the width of the puppet mouth board (from corner to corner) across the puppet's face. Be sure only to cut through the top layer of fleece in the puppet's face leaving the back layer of fleece intact. Cut slowly for best accuracy.

3. Place the puppet mouth board in the slit that you cut in Step 2.

4. Pull the top edge of the fleece around the slit down over the top edge of the puppet mouth board to create a small upper lip of fleece.

5. Bring the bottom edge of the fleece around the slit up over the bottom edge of the puppet mouth board to create a small bottom lip of fleece.

6. Check to make sure that the corners of the slit in the fleece match up with the corners of the puppet's mouth board. If they don't, then repeat Steps 4 and 5 until the corners match up.