My creative Christmas – festive finger puppets

Now we’re well and truly into a wet and blustery January I thought I would cheer myself up by thinking back to all the lovely creative things we got up to over Christmas.

I got back into cross stitching, my sister Amie tried to teach me how to crochet (let’s call that one a work in progress), I had a whale of a time sticking and stitching Christmas and thank you cards, and the ladies sat round the dining room table one afternoon making Christmas finger puppets.

Whenever I manage to get up north to visit my family, my mum sorts out a fun creative activity for us all to do. At Easter it was of course egg decorating, and for Christmas she bought a pack for making festive finger puppets. There were rectangles of different coloured felt, sequins, coloured threads to match the felt, googly eyes and an assortment of finger puppet templates.

Amie and I decided to make elves, mum an angel/fairy and Rudolph, and Grandma made a Rudolph and little penguin, though the reindeer got stage fright when we were taking photos and his nose dropped off.

To make my elf I cut two basic finger shapes out of skin-coloured felt and sewed them together using an oversewing stitch, which I then unpicked and did again as it was so messy! Perfectionist? Moi? Terribly so.

I sewed the little chappie some ginger curls, then set about making the hat out of red felt with a green felt band. I sewed on a little green pompom for the bobble, then stitched the hat on to my elf’s head using backstitch (which I also used for the hat).

I wrapped a piece of red felt around the puppet and sewed it in place for the clothing – can’t have a naked elf – and stitched on some sequins for buttons. I finished off by sewing on a mouth, drawing on a nose with black biro, and gluing two googly eyes in place. The only difficult bit was finishing off the stitching for the mouth on the inside of the puppet, but I realised I could trail the thread down to the inside of the red coat and pull it through there for a few securing stitches.

There were a variety of techniques used – I stitched most of mine whereas Amie made a brilliant little elf sticking everything with glue – but regardless of what finger puppet we made or how we made it, we all had great fun. With turkey and stuffing still lining our stomachs, what better way to spend the afternoon than being creative with the people you love.