My four year old daughter loves drawing, and is very supportive of my creative endeavours. She recently made a card for me that she called a ‘Puppet Card’ with images of puppets that she had imagined. So this new puppet project is about turning one of her visions into an actual puppet.

I thought about streamlining it, but of course the delight and uniqueness of her pictures are in the characterful designs and unevenness.

The creatures available are, she tells me, a cat, an octopus, a jellyfish, and a habla, which I think is a made up thing because she couldn’t remember what it was supposed to be.

So I’m going to start with the cat and see how I get on, and I’m going to try and use some of the tips and techniques that I’ve observed in videos by the wonderful puppet maker Adam Kreutinger on his YouTube channel.

To start with, I have made a clay version of the puppet, and have tried to align its proportions directly to the figure that Erin drew, and have covered it in masking tape. From this masking tape I should hopefully be able to try and create a pattern that I can then transfer to the foam to make the shape of the puppet.

I suspect the hardest bit will be doing the fabric, once the foam puppet is made, as this involved sewing and understanding how fabrics work, which are not skills that I possess or have any confidence that I can actually do.

Here he is, I’ve just got the ears still to do: