It’s almost officially summer, and we’re more than a little bit excited about it! With gardens and parks in full bloom, we can’t help but want to be enjoying the beautiful warm weather surrounded by the lovely floral scents. Daisy is so excited about it that she can’t stop dancing!

Today we’re making another one of our favorite DIY pasta puppets, this time in the shape of a dancing daisy! This puppet was inspired by a few marionettes we saw at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as well as the singing flowers in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland – if you haven’t seen it, search for “golden afternoon – Alice in Wonderland” and you’re in for a real treat! And if you ever have a chance to visit the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, we cannot recommend it enough! It is full of some of the most amazing puppets we’ve ever seen.

We realize we sound like a bit of a broken record, but we can’t stop talking about how much we love using pasta noodles as a craft supply! We used green, white, and yellow to make our puppet look like a daisy but you can mix and match different colors and petal shapes to create whatever flower you like. Wouldn’t it be fun to make a whole bunch of dancing flowers in different colors?

Watch the video below to see a quick how-to, and scroll down to read the full instructions.

• Pasta noodles
• Wooden beads
• Apple Barrel Acrylic Craft Paint (green & yellow)
• Paintbrushes
• Green pipe cleaners
• White paper or cardstock
• Scissors
• Black marker
• Wooden skewer
• String or elastic cord
• Hot glue gun

Step 1
Cut a piece of elastic cord and put 1 smaller and 1 larger wooden bead at the top to be the daisy’s head. Bend two green pipe cleaners in half and place on the string – these will be the arms and legs. Put pasta noodles along the body between the pipe cleaners (3), on the pipe cleaner arms (2) separated by a small wooden bead, and on the legs (2) again separated by a small wooden bead. Pause the video at the 0:05 second mark to get a good look at this layout. Once everything is strung together, bend the pipe cleaner ends into loops to look like hands and feet.

Step 2
Paint all the pasta and wooden beads – everything for the body should be painted green, and the big bead for the head should be painted yellow. Let dry.

Step 3
Cut eight petal shapes out of white paper and fold a small flap at the base of each one. Use a hot glue gun to attach each petal around the yellow bead and then use a black permanent marker to draw on a cute face!

Step 4
Tie the string from the top of the daisy’s head onto the wooden skewer and tie another piece from each hand onto the skewer as well.

Time to get dancing!

Photo and video by Caroline Gravino
Creative direction by Handmade Charlotte