This was previously posted on a blog of mine back in 2012. I created this puppet due to a silly "cartoon monkey voice" that I had finally revealed to my kids. My girls and I wanted to create a puppet show with this new monkey... so that's what we did. This was step two. The mouth taking a little more work because, well, the mouth is pretty freaking important in the grand scheme of being a puppet :)

You can find the previous post about Step One: Making the head/skull & body/belly HERE

Wow, was this hit and miss! Looking at it, it looked super simple, easy to understand. I hadn't bought foam core board, because we ALWAYS have foam core board sitting around.

Which, of course, meant that THIS time we didn't have any.

Oh well, I am a genius at making something out of nothing, breaking the rules, working around an issue. I knew that I had this down.

I was wrong.

Here I am, I am certain that some hard carbdoard will do the same thing, right?
Sheesh. See how easy that was? I'm like a boss.

For your reference, the cardboard is supposed to be equally as thick as the foam surrounding it.

Huh. Definite Fail.

Ah HA! All is not lost. I am on the BALL.

I decide to just give up and use regular cardboard glued together to the correct width, because yes, I am that bad about NOT wanting to drive to town for yet ANOTHER thing.

Then, after these long hours (or minutes, I guess) my daughter Paris @loliboofae finally finds the foam core board that I KNEW we had.

At least I was right about something???

Those puppet making pros know what they're talking about. There was a definite reason that they say to use foam core board. Yes, I could have made the toehr stuff work, but first off, this was SO easy. And secondly, the foam core board would hold up SO much better with a puppet that will get a lot of use!

Cut out two half circles, stack them and use duct tape to tape along the straight edge.

Unfold, making sure the tape sticks to the sides and goes down into the groove, like so:

Then you add the reticulated foam around the outside. This gives you foam that is useful for pinning things to later, once its covered with fur/fabric.

Now we're ready for more hot glue (again, hot glue is hot, and sticks to acrylic nails like you wouldn't believe! Don't get it on your fingers OR your nails:) Squeeze hot glue in between the foam core and the reticulated foam.

Do this from both sides, and use plenty of glue. You have to get it covered thoroughly because the last thing you want is your puppet core falling apart after its all covered with fur/fabric.

Now bend your mouth at the hinge and put hot glue on the TOP reticulated foam ONLY:

Then, if you're like me, you let that sit to dry while you go chill in a bubble bath for a while, bribing the kids to be quiet/content by letting them have popcorn if they promise to go watch a movie and be quiet :)