We’re always happy to receive press enquires. Below is a press release – feel free to get in touch with team@picturetopuppet.co.uk or 0131 554 4753 if you’d like any further info. We’ve got lots of high resolution images available on request.
Summary
Picture to Puppet is a small Edinburgh business making custom puppets and soft toys to order. It was started in 2012, and we’re a small creative team based on Constitution Street in Leith. We make them from photographs, illustrations or descriptions. We also set up our sister company, Leith Toy Hospital, which repairs all kinds of broken toys.
What are our puppets and toys used for?
We make puppets and toys for a huge range of different clients, they’re used for TV shows and theatre productions, comdians, ventriloquists and music videos as well as schools, children’s healthcare providers, social workers and more.
Many of our customers are individuals who order puppets of their friends or family members – if you want your boss to pop out of a jack-in-the-box or a puppet of a loved one to commemorate a special day, just ask!
We make a lot for schools and educational resource companies; lots of schools have their core values mascots made up as puppets or toys – sometimes
they have competitions for the kids to design the mascot and we get to make the winning design up as a puppet. It’s really lovely to work with kids drawings because they have such fabulous creative ideas that adults would never think of – we’ve made roller skating hedgehogs, creatures with caterpillar trucks for feet, monsters with working water pistol attachments and all sorts.
Lots of authors and illustrators have the characters in their books made up as puppets or toys, which are often really charismatic.
We make a lot of company mascots and toys based on people’s logos. We also make puppets for health and social care professionals like children’s counsellors and speech therapists. We’ve done ones with movable lips, teeth and tongues for phonics and even moving hands for teaching sign language.
What do we make?
As well as individual puppets and toys, we also make small runs of up to 50. We mainly make hand and rod puppets, glove puppets and soft toys.
The hand puppets all have moving mouths. I really like making extra mechanisms like blinking eyes, moving eyebrows, wiggling ears; we can do gloves that you can put your hands inside to move your fingers, tattoo sleeves. We even make props to go with the puppets, like swords, sheilds, wheelchairs, hockey sticks.
In terms of the costumes for them, we get a lot of baby’s clothes in local charity
shops and often adapt them to fit the puppets – often though they need something very specific so we make it from scratch.
With the toy hospital, we repair modern and antique toys, mainly teddies, dolls and puppets but sometimes all kinds of other things.
How We started
I started the business in 2012, having previously studied textiles at Edinburgh College of Art and worked as a dressmaker.
As well as studying textiles, I also made a few puppets for friends and put them up on my website, and gradually started to get more requests for puppets, and decided to make it into a business. I worked part time alongside it for a couple of years, then went full time. It’s just got busier and busier – the team is always growing and we’re always rushed off our feet.
I really enjoy it, it never gets boring because every commission is different, and it’s
nice to work with all our customers’ ideas, which are often really
cool and creative.