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for her birthday in 2006. A few months later, the puppet was featured on Ellen's show in a segment about how people decorate their office cubicles and it was placed on the set in a chair in a cubicle for Ellen. As the camera panned Ellen's "cubicle", she commented that it was her puppet, who she let handle all the firing. |
examining a Grover plush doll to figure it all out. It was supposed to be 'medium' sized, but I made the head first and the head came out larger than expected, so it dictated the size of the body (basically the size of a small toddler!) A picture below shows my then 7-year-old sitting next to Ellen, to give you an idea of the scale. |
My kids had a small crow puppet that "kawed" so that's how I got the idea for the Ellen puppet in the first place (if you watched the show at the time, you know what I'm referring to...Ellen used to 'kaw' at the audience during her monologues). So I bought a second crow puppet, took out it's "KAW" mechanism, and put it into the Ellen puppet head. The result was when you stick your hand into the head and squeeze the mouth open and closed, it "KAWed". I purchased a pair of little recording modules that when you press them, they play what you record (similar to what you press on a teddy bear to get a melody to play). I recorded a bit of the Ellen theme song on one and Ellen 'kawing' from the show on the other and inserted them into the stuffed puppet hands. The shoes started out as white baby shoes and with metallic nail polish, I turned them into mini "Adidas"-style shoes. Finally, I added a framed picture of Ellen's mama as she was often featured on Ellen's show and to give it a personal finishing touch of detail. |
Pics below, showing the construction and detail of the head portion (and the 'magical kaw'). |
