Making a Collaged Paper Rabbit Puppet

A group of friends and I get together once a month to exchange small handmade art tokens, usually artist trading cards (ATCs). We have a theme, or prompt, for each month, which anyone may use or not as suits them. We hadn't yet come up with our list of prompts for 2023 when we scheduled our January meeting, so we left it as "artist's choice," both regarding theme and form, so long as we keep to a small format similar to ATCs, which are 2.5" x 3.5". 

Our meeting this month is on the day before the Lunar New Year (January 22, 2023), so I wanted to make something related to Year of the Rabbit, and I decided to make a paper doll or puppet that could be placed on the end of a coffee stir stick (because I have a lot of those), thinking it could be displayed as an ornament of some sort. I'm envisioning pushing the stick into a houseplant, but I didn't want to constrain the others that I give them to, so I wanted the stick to be removable.

With that in mind, I did a few sketches of running/leaping rabbits, then traced over one of the sketches, tracing the parts separately, to make a set of templates. Since I used a rather flimsy translucent paper for tracing, I scanned the sheet of rabbit parts, reduced it slightly in size, and then printed it on heavy card stock so I could cut out the individual shapes and then trace around them onto decorative paper/light card stock and assemble them into colorful puppets. You could use a sheet of vellum instead, to trace the parts without needing to scan and print them after.

The most time-consuming and challenging part for me was selecting among my various decorative papers for colors and patterns that I thought go together. Once I made my selections, the cutting and assembling went pretty quickly and was rather fun.

I chose fairly plain parts of the deco papers for the heads and then drew the faces on. The yellow one at top is from an image of a sun face, and the proportions were just right to use that for my rabbit face, adding just a few marks to complete it. The torsos are also cut with a plain enough center so I could write "Year of the Rabbit 2023" on them. 

First I glued the heads to the torsos, then attached the ears, then put another piece at the back of the head to cover and secure the glued parts. After that, the legs are attached with tiny brads so they can be moved into different positions. 

To make a slot for the stick, I cut a small piece that fit between the legs on back, placed it over the tip of the stick and creased around it with my fingernails, then glued it to the back of the torso and clamped it while the glue set. I use Uhu glue sticks for this and a lot of other things.

These were rather time-consuming but a lot of fun to make. I don't always make something this elaborate for my art swapping group, but once in a while it's nice to try something new, which is one of the reasons I enjoy being a part of it. And I made enough of them to have one extra for myself.