Tiger Cub Scout Puppets

My husband recently had to plan a Tiger Cub Scout evening of activities and after some searching he decided to do Tiger Elective 21, which says to make a puppet.  So this is what we came up with:

  

It's a Tiger Marionette!  Super fun to make, although just challenging enough for six and seven year olds.  My husband did say he had to tie all the knots for it.

Want to make one or an ambush of tigers?  Did you know a group of tigers is called an ambush (or a streak)?

Here's what you'll need for each tiger:

two toilet paper rolls (one for body, half of one for head)

orange and black duct tape

12mm wiggly eyes

orange and black pipe cleaners

glue dots

wooden sporks

striped pom poms

black yarn
craft sticks
(Helpful stuff for adult: hole punch, plastic cutting board, razor blade knife thing)

We got all our materials (that I didn't have on hand) at Hobby Lobby because I love that store and I had a gift card :)
For the adult to pre-prepare: drill holes in sporks and craft sticks & stick lengths of black duct tape to cutting board and slice diagonally to make stripes
1.  Cover the toilet paper rolls and spork handles in orange duct tape.
2.  Punch holes for legs, tale, and head string.
3.  Tie yarn to one front leg, thread it through the two leg holes on body and tie to other front leg.  Repeat for back legs.
4.  Twist an orange and black pipe cleaner together for tail.  Tie black yarn to tail hole on body and then attach tail to body (twist it around the hole).  Tie other end of yarn to one end of the craft stick.
5.  Tie yarn to head hole on body, thread yarn through two holes on head and tie to other end of craft stick.
6.  Attach eyes and pompom ears with glue dots.
7.  Decorate with stripes.
This is a pretty sturdy marionette (must be the duct tape :) and has held up to quite a bit of boy play and two-year-old brother manhandling :)
I think it could be easily altered to make Bear or Wolf puppets if that was the category of Cub Scout you need it for too!

We also had these craft stick people (which they did have enough time to use), paper bag puppet makings, and shadow puppet materials just in case they had extra time :)

This is my five-year-old's tiger (he went too, even though he's not officially a Cub Scout because his dad was leading :)

Felt Garden Toy

I recently made a felt plantable garden toy for a friend's daughter.  I was inspired by A Beautiful Mind and Ikat Bag's amazingly beautiful creations.  I added the broccoli plant with removable broccoli florets (tutorial from Elemental Stitches).  I also made a bean plant similarly to the strawberry plant with green pipe cleaners.
And every garden needs a couple bunnies!  Mine came from Creativity in Pieces.

Broccoli plant - did you know this is how broccoli grows?

Plant with picked broccoli.  See the green velcro in the middle?  Each piece of broccoli has velcro on the bottom too.  Sewing the veins on the leaves was the most time consuming, boring part (even though I used my machine)

Bean plant and picked beans (they all have beads inside so they really feel like beans!)

Carrots (I used ribbon for the tops to be faster)

I loved making the flowers!

Top view of garden.  The "dirt" is actually pool noodle segments inside tubes of brown fleece.

And the bunnies :)