CRAFT: Chinese Dragon Puppet

Welcome kids to "Make it Monday" where today we are learning how to make a Chinese dragon puppet.

My mom's church celebrated Mardi Gras with a talent show. I help teach dance to two different age groups within the church and the older team performed a comedy dance to "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan. 

The girls dressed up super girly; parasols, gloves, skirts, shawls, and then magically transformed (switched places) with a bunch of guys at the end of the song.

The lovelies.

The guys and girls at the final bow. And me *facepalm*?

We needed a Mushu character/prop for one line of the dance, so I ended up making a dragon puppet. I spent about two days working on him and am very pleased with the end result, even if he only had ten seconds of glory on stage.

Here's what you need:

• A dragon face template (the one I used isn't actually Mushu's face).
• An empty soda can carton
• A plastic table cloth
• Tissue paper
• Mod podge/glue
• Markers
• Scissors
• Ribbons/glitter/sequins to decorate

Begin by coloring in your dragon face. You could also draw a design if preferred. I just happened to find this picture sitting around in our library of craft stuff.

If I had a computer template for this I would share.

Cut out the face.  You may want to glue it to a piece of cardboard to help keep it sturdy, but I wasn't thinking and his horns and whiskers got a bit bend in the end.

All colored.

Take your table cloth and measure around the soda carton. This will become his body, so choose how long you'd prefer it to be. I left it the length of the box, but draped it down longer on the sides. Place the table cloth off to the side.

Measuring.

Take your box and cut off the end. This will be the dragon's head. His face will get glued to the closed end, so measure how long you want the side of his head to be. Mine was about 6 inches long.

Cut out three 3x3 squares (or more if your dragon's body is longer). These will become the "spine" of the dragon, giving the tablecloth support while still allowing space to move and flow.

Head and body brought to you by Coca Cola. ;)

Lay out the cardboard onto the cloth and glue the three panels into place. Make sure you space them a few inches apart. Don't glue on the head yet.

Spacing.

Now for the superfunexcitingtimeconsumingrepetitive part. Ask a friend to help cut out tissue paper fringes. I forgot to count exactly how many sheets of paper we ended up using, but it didn't seem to be many. Cut each section to be about 5 or 6 inches long, four inches tall and each fringe about half and inch wide. Cut from the bottom, up until about a half inch from the top (you don't want to cut the fringes off!)

**Make sure each section of fringe is the same size. I ran into trouble with pieces that were longer than others.

Fringy stuff.

Glue the dragon's face to the front of the box. Glue on the fringe overlapping to create a textured look. I started by gluing the sides bottom to top and then glued the top of his head. Any excess on the top of the head was rounded over the sides and glued down.

A wrinkly mess is what I get for using leftover paper.

Begin gluing the fringes to the table cloth. Start at the bottom and work your way up. Leave about half an inch showing underneath each new fringe. This takes time. And patience. So turn on the TV or something to keep you entertained.

I glued the sides of the body first, pointing the fringes downward. After I let it dry, I propped it up onto another soda carton and glued on the back fringes pointing to the tail.

Using different colored paper helps to distinguish 

top from bottom as well as adds an illusion of scales.

This was probably my hardest part; figuring out how to attach the head. I ended up cutting an extra piece of cardboard (2x4in) and gluing one end inside his head and the other onto the bottom of the tablecloth.

If you can figure out something better, let me know.

Flip your dragon onto his belly, decorate with ribbons, etc. and you are done! Well, sort of... see, mine is still not perfected. There is no great way to hold it except gripping the inside of the head and another hand underneath his body, but even then it's not good support. I thought about adding a handle or even a glove to put your hand inside. He needs something in his belly to help make him sturdy so he can be more mobile. I don't know yet. Maybe some day I'll come back with a fix, but probably not.

Finished Mushu/dragon puppet.