Progress has been made with puppet construction – now up to 30 separate characters – but things are very slow with costumes.

As many of my puppet heads are done in super Sculpey, I am starting to use a method for making some of them in silicone. This involves taking a silicone mould of the hardened sculpey, then pouring in melted Chavant clay to get a clay head that I can then re-sculpt a little before casting in plaster for the final piece in silicone. A quick way to create siblings! The detail quality is not great from the melted clay, but at least the proportions are accurate, and more sculpting can be done on top.
Will try the firmer grade of Sculpey to see if it is resilient enough to take a mould off it without baking it. It’s all to do with that golden rule: cast a flexible piece inside a solid mould and vice versa.