How to Make a Puppet Theatre from a Cereal Box
This project is simple and fun to make but the real fun is in creating your own puppet show. We’ll make puppets to go with the theatre in a separate post. Here’s a link to making finger puppets: http://getcreativewithnana.com/how-to-make-finger-puppets
SUPPLIES
- Cardboard cereal box (we used a large one and a smaller one)
- Scissors (or exacto knife depending on who’s doing the cutting)
- Acrylic paint (red and gold)
- Paintbrushes
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Glue
- Tape
- Stapler
INSTRUCTIONS
Undo the glued seams of the box so it lies open and flat.
Using a ruler mark the cutting line and cut the cardboard. (the knife blade in the photo is touching the cutting line)
Save the extra cardboard for the strip for top edge of the theatre. (The piece of cardboard on the right of the photo is the one we used for the puppet theatre itself, the piece on the left we cut up for the fancy top front piece, more about that later)
Sketch a rectangle in the middle for the theatre stage opening and cut it out with scissors (or an adult can use a utility knife to do it to save time)
To make the fancy top for the theatre cut a strip of cardboard the width of the theatre. (We’ll glue this to the top front after it’s painted) This strip helps stiffen the cardboard and helps keeps the front from curling too much and it looks nice.
Sketch a flourish or other pattern along the top of the strip and cut it out. To save cutting you can just leave the strip plain and paint some fancy elements onto it instead. That is up to you.
Next we cut out some decorative shapes from the extra cardboard pieces and painted them gold. (see upper left of photo) These create a kind of 3D effect for the trim when glued onto the front. You can also just paint these right onto the front to save time.
Glue the fancy strip to the top front of the theatre.
The extra gold embellishments were painted directly onto the cardboard. Add more details to the front if you like or leave it simple and call it done. We used gold paint for the lines along the top and sides to add more architectural detail (for the fun of it)
Now we’re ready to stand the theatre up. Start by folding the bottom flap under, painted side down.
Fold the side flap up over the outside and staple (or tape) it in place.
The finished theatres ready for puppets. The big one is for finger puppet show and smaller one is for stick puppet shows.
Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to make some simple puppets to use in your theatre in Nana’s next post.
Nana’s next creative project is How to Make Felt Finger Puppets and Construction Paper Stick Puppets. Stay tuned to getcreativewithnana.com for the next segment of the puppet theatre project.
If you try this project we’d love to see a photo. Post a photo of your masterpiece on Nana’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GetCreativeWithNana