The Tumbles P. Bear Project

Part Three: Let's Make A Mouth!

 
To make Tumbles' mouth, I began with the mouth plate, which is the flat inside of a puppet's mouth. First, I traced a circle equal to the circumference of the mouth opening that I had earlier cut in Tumbles' head on to a sheet of gasket rubber, a flexible material commonly used in plumbing. I had purchased a small assortment of 7" squares of gasket rubber in varying thicknesses from a local hardware store, but you can also find gasket rubber in larger sizes with a little patience and luck at plumbing supply outlets. It's usually sold in large black sheets and priced according to its weight.

If you can't find gasket rubber you can always experiment with other materials like craft (or "fun") foam, thick vinyl and even cardboard. I know of one builder who has had some success making mouth plates by gluing sheets of foam and vinyl together.

Once the mouthplate was traced and cut, next I had to clean up some rough edges on the mouth plate with an X-acto knife to make them perfectly round. Once that was done I traced the mouthplate on to a piece of black felt (I actually ended up making the black felt circle just a slightly larger than the mouth plate). Once that was done I carefully cut the mouth plate exactly in half and then glued the halved mouth plate to the cut out black circle. I was careful to leave a little unglued space at the outer edge of the black circle so later on I can sew on the mouth plate, otherwise I'd have to sew through contact cement, which is not a lot of fun.

It's worth noting that normally I would have attached finger grips to the mouth plate, but Tumbles' mouth is so small they're not really necessary and the puppeteer who was performing Tumbles had specifically requested not to have any.

Once the mouth plate is finished I begin to pattern the rest of Tumbles' mouth out of fur just eyeballing it and using trial and error. The mouth could have been made from foam and then covered in fur to prevent it from "caving in" but I decided in this case that wasn't necessary. Once I'd stitched the upper and lower mouth fur together I carefully stitched the two pieces to the mouth plate to complete the mouth. It's a good idea to do this slowly and carefully to ensure that everything remains properly centered. Pinning the two halves to the mouth plate prior to sewing would have been a good idea, but I didn't bother.

Once everything is sewn together and attached it's time to move on to the next step.

Click here to go to part four