Never  used a machine with a thread cutter.  Sounds like a wonderful little tool! Congrats on your new machine!

So are you making these for folks or is you house just filling up with dragons?

Ahh but what a great picture it is! I tell you what Spoon really get around.   I think it is great when puppets are used to help out others. Kudos to you, your daughters and Spoon!

Wow I had no idea that Tel Aviv had a puppetry center. It looks to be as extensive as the center in Atlanta.  Very cool!   

Wow you have your very own theme song. Very cute and fun! So I take it you play this before your shows.

Perhaps a bit off topic but if you watch closely there are some puppets.


I caught the scent of this guy via FaceBook and another cover he did of Le Miz.  He is pretty good. Well worth clicking and following to his channel on YouTube.

I have not use Das but if it is anything like Creative Paper Clay then it is not so much that you are using water with it but that your layer is too thick or varied in thickness.  If I use too thick a layer of CPC then it cracks so I try to build up my layers or I simply go back in and fill the cracks once the initial layer is dry. Some sites suggest that with air dry clays you try to keep all your layers the same thickness. You can accomplish this by using fillers. Check out my tutorial on the Carnival puppets I made. I sculpted the bulk of the head out of a dense close cell styro foam and then added my details with CPC.

Also I sometimes get craking is I add something on to a layer that is already dry. For example I create the base layers then add a nose. In this case I use white glue applied to the dry layer and add my nose on top of that. This seems to help some.

You don't want to rush the drying process. Often I am impatient so I speed the process by placing in a very low dry oven or out in the sun.  This almost always creates cracks but they are easily filled in.   To slow the process of drying you can place in a cool room and cover lightly with plastic wrap. Don't seal it completely just cover lightly.

Adding too much water into the mix can create cracking simply because you have watered out the binding agent. That is one reason for the introduction of white glue into the mix like I mentioned above. Even when working with wet layers I often use white glue between each while sculpting.

Who is this clown.   Sorry couldn't resist. 

I would think the smoothfoam balls would hold up better then ping pong balls in the long run. Granted sometimes there is still some visual sections/lines that can be seen in the smoothfoam but I would think that a couple coats of gesso and then a coat of paint would take care of that. Could even put a thin layer of tissue paper mache' on them.

Hey congrats! Best of luck on your interview... don't them bully you... you know those newscasters, they like to ask the hard questions.

Thought maybe they had a live feed going on thier site but could not find it.  I assume if it does broadcast live it'll be on http://www.local12.com/content/gmc/default.aspx