Lion hand puppet

I haven't forgotten about my craft advent plans here on the blog, but whilst I've been caught up in the party season finding time to sit and write blog posts has been ditched in favour of doing things that will provide content for blog posts. The crafting has continued at a furious pace and I am hoping that by December 25th, you will have had a total of 25 crafty blog posts, even if they're not at a constant rate of one a day.

Today's craft "show and tell" is something that Little Miss C and I made together this afternoon – a lion hand puppet.

I have to admit up front that this actually came from a kit that is part of the Wilkinson's Craft Time range. If you've got kids and haven't yet discovered this range that they do in many of their stores as well as online then I definitely recommend that you do. There are loads of craft kits and materials that are suitable for kids of all ages and they are also all incredibly cheap. This kit, to make two felt hand puppets (a lion and an elephant in my case – slightly different to that shown online) only costs £1 and contains all the felt (admittedly it is very thin) with the holes for sewing it up already punched in it. The smaller felt additions have a sticky backing to them and you're even supplied with a plastic child friendly needle too.

With the exception of it being really fiddly to get the backing off the stick on eyes, this was incredibly easy to make. I sewed it up and LMC helped stick on the lion's features. I did use some extra fabric glue to make sure that the eyes remained where they should be and didn't become a danger to LMC, but if you had older kids then that shouldn't be a problem. She was fascinated by the way that the whole thing came together and when it was complete she soon got the idea of putting her hand inside the puppet and bringing it to life.

I'm saving the elephant so that we can make it together the next time that we have a rainy afternoon at home – but looking at the weather forecast I don't think we'll be waiting long. The simple shapes in the kit have also given me some ideas of my own for future hand puppets – watch this space. 

Disclaimer – this is not a sponsored post. I bought the hand puppet kit myself from my local branch of Wilkinson's and as we enjoyed making it so much I wanted to share it with you here.