How to Make a Felt Alligator Hand Puppet

Hand puppets are a great addition to your child's toy collection, a birthday party puppet show or as a craft project. The alligator hand puppet is easy to make out of felt and a few embellishments. Follow these steps.

Things You'll Need

• Scissors
• Green felt, measured 2 feet long by 2 feet wide
• Black felt
• White felt
• Pink felt, measured 1 foot by 1 foot
• Craft glue
• Needle and thread or sewing machine

Instructions

1. Take the whole sheet of green felt, and wrap it around your lower arm, right above the wrist. Continue to wrap it so that it is enclosed around your hand and fingers, but loose. Have another person mark with a dark writing utensil on the felt where it fits around your wrist, hand, and where it ends at the tip of your fingers. Have the other person cut out the spacing between your upper fingers and thumb. This will create the mouth of the alligator.

2. Cut out the fabric, making it as wide as your measurements, and at least 9 inches long so it reaches from your finger tips to your wrist. If you wrap the cut-out around your hand, it should resemble a green felt covering over your hand.

3. Overlap the right side of the fabric onto the left side after it has been cut out, so that the edges are touching. Make sure the two long pieces that are the upper and lower jaw of the mouth, are on top of each other with the edges lined up. Sew the edges together, completely closed. Enter your wrist through the bottom of the puppet, up to where your hands fit within the open mouth, and your knuckles will be where the eyes should be of the alligator.

4. Lay out the pink felt. Measure out a strip of the fabric that is 8 inches long, by 3 inches wide. Cut out this strip, rounding off each edge into a circle. This is going to be the inside of the alligator's mouth.

5. Take the white felt and measure out the teeth to your specifications. You can fill the mouth with teeth if you desire, but the simple process is to attach four teeth on the top, and four teeth on the bottom. Draw little triangles on the white felt, each of them about a 1/2 inch tall by 1/2 inch wide on the base of the triangle. Cut them out. Place four of the teeth along one side of the pink felt strip, rounding around the edge. Repeat this process with the other side of the strip. Take the needle and thread, and secure the teeth to the "bottom" and the "top" of the alligator's mouth. Fold the pink strip in half to create the upper and bottom part of the mouth.

6. Take the pink felt with the white teeth sewn on, and sew one folded side onto the green felt that is the bottom of the mouth. Repeat this process with the upper part of the mouth. Once sewn completely, there should be no holes or open space between the green and pink. If you put your hand through the puppet, you can move your fingers and thumb up and down to create the version of the alligator "talking."

7. Add felt eyes, made with the white and black felt, to the top of the alligator's head where your knuckles sit under. Or, you can glue craft eyes to the alligator. Make them as big or as small as you want.