Dream Carver

Dream Carver is a bilingual, musical puppet show based on the children’s book of the same name by Diana Cohn, illustrated by Amy Cordova. The book is inspired by the life of Manuel Jimenez who pioneered the Oaxacan woodcarving style. The puppets for Dream Carver are based the illustrations by Amy Cordova. The show was created by Swazzle,  a puppet building company based in Glendale, Ca. They specialize in puppet designers, builders, puppeteers, directors, and more! I highly suggest you check out their facebook page and check out their past and future projects. You might even see me in some of their album pictures!

I joined a few other puppet builders to help build the first set of puppets in time for a library showcase.

Quetzel the bird was already traced and cut by the time I got there, but there was plenty of hand sewing to do!

A long while later…

All this for just one wing…

The pieces weren’t attached yet but we layed everything out to see what the finished pupet would lok like.

Next comes the jaguar!

Here I am tracing some jaguar fur.

Next is spots! So many spots!

Fun Spot Fact. Over 175 spots and at least 10 flower spots had to be traced, cut and hand stitched in to their corresponding holes.

So many spots!

I also did some foam gluing. I was making arms and a jaguar leg.

And here they are, the finished puppets!