First You Gotta Die-Talking Seeds Prop

Our church is putting together a short Easter puppet program, which includes pre-recorded scripts from One Way Street.  Two of the scripts are only a minute each, so we won’t be doing much in the way of costumes or elaborate props.  But one thing we needed was a box of seeds, who aren’t very happy about being planted. “We’re all going to die!” 

I made the seeds from two sizes of plastic Easter eggs.  All are spray painted, with craft foam eyes and short sections of feather boa hair attached using hot glue. Next time, it may help to use sandpaper on the plastic for better adherence–an eye and the boa hair came off one puppet. 

I cut a hand-sized hole into the bottom of the box, and used crumpled newspaper  to build up the interior of the box so fewer eggs were needed to fill it.  The paper was glued around the interior walls of the box, leaving the middle open for the seed puppeteer’s hand to work  three  large seeds as finger puppets.   She will be using an inexpensive cotton work glove, as this bulks up her wrist so the box doesn’t move around too much, or slide down her arm. 

Three of the larger eggs have the bottom sawed off, leaving a one-inch hole to insert a finger.  However, this left too much room in the interior of the egg for a snug fit around the puppeteer’s finger.  So I opened the egg shell and used it like a cookie cutter to fill the egg halves with floral foam, then closed the shell again.  Floral foam is soft enough to allow the puppeteer to shove her fingers into the egg, producing a custom fit.

Most of the seeds were glued onto the crumpled paper around the sides of the box.  The small egg in the center front is not glued in, so the farmer puppet can remove it to plant it into the ground.

The seed box prop worked well for its practice debut, but the seed finger puppets come off easily, which could be a problem!  I may use some temporary spray adhesive on the glove fingers to hold the seeds in place better.

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