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How to Make a Puppet With a Moving Mouth and a NERF Ball Head

Parker Brothers revolutionized indoor play in 1970 with balls made of "non-expanding recreational foam," or NERF. The foam is dense and the balls are solid throughout, so they can be sculpted into heads for hand puppets. Start with simply cutting a lower jaw off a baseball-sized sphere and see where else your imagination runs to make this puppet some friends.

Things You'll Need

1 baseball-sized NERF or other solid-foam sphere
Tongs or medium carpentry clamp
Small keyhole saw or hacksaw
Club-style kitchen peeler/corer
1 athletic tube sock
Scissors
Elastic braid
Curved upholstery-sewing needle
Permanent markers

Instructions

- 1
  Hold the ball in tongs, or let the weight of a carpentry clamp hold it to protect your fingers, but be careful not to deform the sphere. Gently saw off about a third of the ball for the lower jaw.
- 2
  Lay the jaw piece flat side down on a scratch-proof surface and pierce it with the corer at an angle of about 30 degrees. Work the corer all the way to the flat surface and turn it gently back and forth to cut out a tunnel without tearing the foam apart.
- 3
  Set the larger piece of the sphere on its flat side and core out two tunnels parallel to the flat surface. Stop only about halfway through.
- 4
  Cut the end of the toe off the sock and extend this slot along one side in a half circle. Drop the larger piece of foam ball into the sock and test how easily it squeezes out through this hole. If the full circumference of the ball can't get through without deforming, cut the hole in the sock just the tiniest bit larger.
- 5
  Thread the needle with elastic braid. Put the two pieces of the ball back together with their tunnels parallel and gently run the needle through the edges of both foam pieces between the tunnels, about 1/4 inch from all edges. Take only two or three stitches, to just hold the ball together.
- 6
  Work the ball gently back into the hole in the sock, so that the joint you stitched in the ball is inside the sock, the larger piece of the ball is at the toe and the length of the sock hangs down from the lower-jaw piece of the ball. Make sure the tunnel opening in the lower jaw is inside the sock. Stitch the sock to the ball all around with elastic braid, using a running stitch along the edge of the sock and taking care to go deep enough into the ball that the stitches won't pull out. Start stitching and end it under the chin and tie the ends of the braid into a bow.
- 7
  Draw a face and other features on the ball with permanent markers.
- 8
  Work the puppet by putting your hand in the sock, your first two fingers in the upper part of the head and your thumb in the tunnel through the lower jaw. Let your thumb poke through into the mouth as the puppet's tongue.

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