Small in size but huge on visual impact! And the unit you see here was well used. The primary piece is just a square box into which a moving mouth is built. The pull string for the mouth exits on the bottom out of necessity because the bottom is the only surface of the box exposed when the five "flaps" are folded into the closed position. These thin square flaps are hinged and attached as shown so they can be unfolded (surprise!) to make a cross. I used "contact paper" to cover the undersides of the thin plywood pieces, and the contact paper a
lso served as the "hinges".
lso served as the "hinges". The puppet shown here was used for small classroom presentations, but I also built one twice this size for auditorium presentations. (One holiday season I built a large "talking" manger which unfolded into a large cross for a Christmas Eve program I titled, "From the manger to the Cross". The mechanical idea for the manger was similar to this, just more complex in design because the manger was oblong in shape and had legs.)
