CLIPBOARD CATHY
Cathy is just a 'Nosey Parker' with a clipboard, interrupting the show and annoying Punch.
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It wont end well !
Cathy was made using lime wood offcuts from making a new Policeman puppet.
Because of the shape of my Lime blocks, when I cut out a new head there is always a layer of leftover face parts.
Original drawn sketch from 2022.
My 'jigsaw puzzle' method of cutting out faces always means I get two 'layers' of jigsaw parts per wood block. This is useful for making exact duplicates of the same face. Or a different 'photofit' can be created by slightly altering the parts.
Here is how the Policeman turned out.
His Build is documented in the 'Traditional' Puppets section.
Both 'jigsaw' faces glued onto thin bits of plywood. Back in 2022 I needed the new Policeman for that upcoming Summer Season : so he got fully made.
Clipboard Cathy only got this far. She was then relegated to the 'unfinished puppets' box for several years. This happens quite often.
The concept of what she would eventually become was fully formed in my mind.
Back in 2022 she was to be called Katie.
I had even found fabrics for her costume at local charity shops.
Wool for hair too.
For some reason in 2025 I decided I preferred the name Clipboard Cathy.
There was something about the sculpt that reminded me of the lovely Margie Cooper.
I greatly enjoy her quick wit and banter on the BBCs 'Antiques Road Trip'
But any likeness was only temporary as the sculpt altered a lot in 2025.
Katie / Cathy might have stayed unfinished for many more years, but she was saved by a string of very bright pink plastic beads in a charity shop.
Both faces being shaped and sanded, then gaps filled in with paper Pulp.
Holes are deliberately left in the centre to eventually peg-in their wooden noses.
They were only £1. So they just had to be bought ..and Cathy just had to be made, so she could wear them.
These were a perfect match for the beads in my concept sketch.
The moment. I got home from the charity shop, I started carving Cathys hands right away.
Cathy is an 'extra' puppet for the 2025 season, and I don't really have time to make her.
She will need to be a super fast build. And a fun one too !
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The weather was nice, so I worked out on the old craft table in the garden.
I was in such a hurry to get the hands made, that I had not even searched through my store boxes to find her head yet.
It was a very pleasant surprise to find that I had already hollowed out the back of the face and also got it glued onto a wooden neck. Happy Days !
I found some child sized glasses to suit her character, then built out a wooden nose to "fit" the spectacles. This gave her a huge 'nosey Parker' conk.
The head was made in 2022.
This glove body was started in early 2024.
I was going through a phase of buying nice gents shirts form the charity shop to turn into glove bodies.
Whenever I spot a shirt with nice fabric, I buy it and put it into my stock bin.
Sometimes I will go ahead and actually make a blank puppet body with no actual character in mind.
This way I always have two or three bodies ready to use when I'm building a puppet in a huge hurry - like now.
Back in the present (2025) and I have just a little of the purple gingham left. So I mixed with plainer purple to make stripes on the outside of the body glove.
The plainer purple in the stripes is the fabric I plan to make Cathys big satchel shoulder bag from later in the build.
The tribal print fabric was a very large ladies scarf. Wedge shapes were sewn together to make a full circle skirt.
There was enough tribal print to make two layers and sew them together so that the underskirt was double sided.
Judys underskirts are usually fully hidden under any top dress.
But for Cathy I want the top dress deliberately shorter so that some of this dress always shows.
Wires will hold on not only the spectacles but also all her hair and a fancy hat.
With a head carved all in wood I would add screw eyes to achieve this.
As the back of this head will be paper Pulp, I can make the hair and hat fixings out of strong garden wire and pulp them into the structure.
Scrunched up aluminum foil bulks out a nice light base over which to easily sculpt a layer of the Pulp.
I decided to alter her face a bit with foil and pulp. Because the glasses had given her such a big nose, it seemed to me that her top lip needed beefing up a bit to meet and match the nose.
Once I had padded out her top lip, she didn't look balanced until I also built out her lower lip. Her old chin became her lower lip.
What had begun as her lower lip now becomes a big tongue. This not only gave her a very different 'look', it also suggested to me how I should make her voice sound. Every decision affects something else in a build like this.
Using photos of the new sculpt, I went to 'Procreate' on my iPad and altered the design. At this stage, the finished puppet usually bears a strong resemblance to the altered sketch. It's a useful previz' tool to have.
Actually, in the end I swapped over which side her satchel bag and identity tag would be on.
Seeing this drawing helped me decide to switch the bag to the other side.
Wool hair is easiest to fix to a puppets head when it it woven onto a knitted or crotcheted base. This is very like the process of making a 'wig' for a human.
Individual strands of wool are pulled through the woven base and knotted to become two 'hairs'
Cathys hairdo is to be made of four individual woven 'wig' sections.
I was lucky, I had already made three of them back in 2022, so only had to crotchet and loop one of them.
Once the pulp had dried on her face and back skull, I had all the solid parts needed to assemble her into a puppet character.
Thanks to having so many parts already done years earlier, she is coming together very quickly. Even so, she will end up being a full weeks work.
Head glued into neck and bound on tightly with carpet thread.
The puppets 'arms' are then temporarily stuffed so that cotton fabric and PVA wood glue can be wrapped around.
Like the neck, the arm stumps have carpet thread wrapped around and covered in more PVA glue.
When dry, the arms stumps are firm enough to hot glue the hands onto.
Hot glue alone is not strong enough to permanently secure the hands in place. Another layer of fabric, PVA and carpet thread makes things solid.
At this stage a covering of thin cotton fabric is glued around the neck.
The fabric round the neck gives a flatter surface to paint, the carpet thread would look bumpy.
