Crafting Audrey 2 Puppets - Pod 1, Part 2
Spray Foam and Batting
At this point in my career, expanding spray foam was something I had never used for theatre purposes but had heard of people carving cosplay weapons and props out of it so I knew it could be useful.
PennyDreadful on the muppet central blog wrote about using it to shape the lips of her Audrey 2. She sprayed the front and carved it out until she got the shape she wanted. I decided to give it a shot and although it made a mess while carving, it was worth the effort and gave the form more detail.
I wanted the puppet to be smoother so I covered the halves with quilt batting. It's not very thick batting I think it's called low loft batting but it worked for what I needed and I didn't have to worry about losing detail on the front. I wrapped the batting over the puppet and hot glued the edge to the mouth plate.
I quickly found out how expensive Spandex/Lycra was. Joanns had it for about $17/yard and Hancocks had it for about $16/yard. Estimating how much I would need for all four pods was going to be blow the budget so I looked around and found interlock polyester. It's not shiny like spandex but it's still as stretchy and soft. Plus when working with stage lights shiny can be bad sometimes.
I wrapped the yellow fabric around the edge and pinned it in place. Then when I was happy with the folds a a creases I sewed it by hand. I tried to have the creases towards the front of the mouth so that it would look like the lines on lips. I trimmed the excess fabric on both halves.