Picking Socks for Making Sock Puppets

Series Summary

There is nothing funnier and more non-threatening than a sad looking puppet, and there is no sadder looking puppet than a homemade sock puppet. These second hand creations made from old or partner-less socks or stockings can be created with any cute or funny face a creative crafter can think up. Once you've got the sock puppet eyes, mouth and nose, just stick your hand in that sock and go to town with a funny play or cute new friend. Sock puppets are not just for puppet shows either. They can be used as therapy tools, or educational assistants.

In this free video series, our expert will show you how to make your own homemade sock puppet. This is a great craft to share with children because it is fun and easy. Learn how to pick the best sock to make a sock puppet, and how to design your sock puppet. Get great tips for adding the sock puppets mouth, tongue, eyes, hair and even clothing. If you are looking for fun and creative way to spend the afternoon, let our expert show you how to make sock puppets, and then get to spend all the time you want playing with your new sock puppet friend.

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Grace Fitzpatrick here on behalf of Expert Village and I'm here to talk to you today about how to choose a sock for your sock puppet. There's a lot of thought that goes into choosing the right sock for your right sock puppet. Chances are if you're going to be making a sock puppet, you're probably going to be choosing from socks that are already in your collection. Basically, you have to work with what you have. I'm going to show you a couple of different kinds of socks and talk about the disadvantages and advantages of each one. Then I'm going to choose the sock that I'm going to make into a sock puppet today. Something that you want to think about when you're choosing your sock for your sock puppet is how your sock is going to be when it's on your arm. If you are an adult and you're making the sock puppet for yourself, your arm is going to be a little bit bigger than a child's might. You want to think about who you're making the sock puppet for. I'm going to give you an example now. If I were to choose an athletic sock from my collection, it's going to give me a certain athletic when I put it on my hand. It doesn't go down very far, so I'm going to say this isn't a very good choice for a sock puppet. You want your sock to go down to about here so that you have sort of a body for your character that you're going to be making. Let's discard any athletic socks. You also want to think about the color of your sock puppet. I'm going to show you now 3 different colors. We have a sort of a taupe, a dark brown, and a tan. If you choose the dark socks, you want to remember that your features are going to then need to stand out from the sock. I happen to know that I'm going to be using some darker and more colorful supplies, so I might want to choose a sock with a lighter background, but maybe not white just to give it a little variation. Remember that you're going to be choosing from probably socks with no mate in your sock draw, so you may not have much of a choice, but you do want to keep all these things in mind."