Thrifty Theatrics of the Puppet Sort

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm on the planning committee for my son's parochial school's big Spring Fundraising Gala, and I decided to throw my thrifty creativity toward creating some cool and different items for this year's Silent Auction at the event.  The first that I committed to was the Tres Chic Play Kitchen.  Then, this item came my way from someone on FreeCycle.org:

Months ago, I saw Beckie at Infarrantly Creative make an adorable puppet theater from an old hutch/bookshelf thingy. Genius!  I knew right away that this bookshelf headboard would make a fantastic puppet theater.  Knowing that I, myself, have no room whatsoever for anything of the sort in my house, I thought that I could make this for the school's silent auction as well!  I get a project, and the school gets some moola!  Win/win...

It really needed very little structural work in order to make it over into puppet theater form.  I just got a small piece of beadboard cut for the front and nailed that on and removed the back from the top portion.  Like Beckie's, mine was a little top heavy and none-too-steady.  I wouldn't want to crush any little Catholic School kiddo while they were attempting to act out some story for their Grandparents in their living room, so I jig sawed some boards down to an arch shape and attached them to the sides for added stability.

After those minor alterations, all it needed was paint.  I chose Cherry Red from Krylon, which is a really fantastic, deep red.  This was my first time using this color, and I'm a now a huge fan.  After a coat of black glaze, I was in love.  I have to recommend, if you'd like to keep your sanity when working with reds, do yourself a favor and use gray primer.  It makes the job so much easier!  It only took one coat and a touch up here and there after the gray primer.

And if you want a glorious color combination, try paring the Cherry Red with Blue Ocean Breeze, also from Krylon.  I painted the chalk board marquee frame with this fave color (it was leftover from the Turquoise Chair), and it was the perfect accent to the deep red!  I hand-painted the "Presenting" and flourishes, and the marquee is ready to announce the latest production!

I used a little turquoise bucket that I had around and painted on "Puppets" and some flourishes with some red acrylic.  It holds some hand puppets I bought from Amazon for the occasion.

Also made a little curtain out of some vintage fabric that I found at the thrift store, held up with an el-cheapo expansion rod.

Voila!!

Hope you're inspired to start looking at old things in new ways!

Craftily Yours,

This project is competing in the Kid's Craft Challenge at The CSI project!