Paper Character Puppets

Here’s a fun project to beat the heat! Kids will have a blast making homemade paper puppets out of their favorite characters! DIY paper puppets are easy to make — just print off our handy coloring pages, color in the characters and cut them out. And best of all, one you are done you can put on your own puppet show!

We printed off some characters from the popular Disney movie Big Hero 6. My three-year-old daughter has loved this movie ever since it came out. Baymax easily became her favorite character over the Disney princesses and even Tinkerbell. We’ve made these handy character printables available for your own use at the bottom of this post.

To make your character puppets, cut out each character and color them in using colored pencils, markers, even paint! Get as creative as you want!

Once each character is decorated, cover both sides of the cutout with packing tape, overlapping the tape to cover the whole character. You could also use contact paper. This will give the puppet durability and make it water resistant.

Finally, tape the character onto a popsicle stick or wooden skewer. This easy project is simple for toddlers to help with, and learning how to maneuver kids’ safety scissors to cut out the characters helps teach fine motor skills.

You can make a whole variety of character puppets! Just print off your favorite characters from a simple google search, size them to a medium size within your printing program, and color them in! We printed some of these puppets on cardstock and others on regular paper with a glued-on cardboard backing for durability.

Once your puppets are finished, you can get to work coming up with a story line for your puppets to act out. Share your puppets with friends during a playdate or put on a puppet show for the rest of the family! A cardboard box makes a wonderful puppet stage!

Character Puppet Printables

Use these templates to create Big Hero 6, Hello Kitty, Frozen, or Inside Out puppets! Click each image to open the high-resolution printable file in a new window.