expiration date 

actually, the marionette was done about a week ago. but it took us forever to edit the movie, which you can see at the bottom of the post.

anyways, where did i leave off? ah… unassembled.

so, basically, we sewed the arm onto the shoulder socket and connected the palm. the rest is assembled by the screws. we used mostly binder screws because they allow smoother movements. and viola… the little girl looks like a naked pinocchio.

pardon the weird beady eyes… aina took a pen and drew them when we weren’t watching. she said that the marionette should be able to see.

after that, ari painted the puppet, covering the weird beady eyes…

she looks much prettier with painted eyes and lips… we’re thinking, to make it look a little bit like aina: brown eyes and pink lips. although, aina wanted red lips.

when all the painting was done, ari applied diluted wood glue (mixed with water) to seal the wood.

while she was being painted, i sewed the clothes. upon aina’s request, the marionette needs to wear a flowery skirt, an apron, and a pale pink coat. we couldn’t find the pale pink fabric that we liked, so we ended up with this bright pink one… which i like better.

first, sew the tulle to make the skirt ballooned.




sewing the apron onto the skirt.

during the coat-making, ari glued the long brown hair, made out of thick knitting yarn, onto the head.

since the back of the head was rather flat (we didn’t have enough material to make a rounded head), we had to glue 4 layers of yarn to make it a little rounder. it took us 3 days to do the hair, because we had to wait for each layer to dry.

aina loves her princess marionette :)

after a day or two with no strings (aina took it everywhere), we bought the small nails and put the strings on.

and this is the short video of our first attempt to play the Princess Aina Maninonet…
it’s soooo hard! you can see that we need lots of practice…

next plan: to make the string shorter so that aina can play the princess too… by the way, i know she doesn’t look like a princess, but that’s what aina has been calling her, so we go with “princess” as her name.

ps: more photos? of course! they are in the Aina Princess Maninonet photo album :)