Upcycle some trash into an awesome shadow puppet theater

I've been eyeballing this shadow puppet theater tutorial from Smaller since I came across it over the summer. I should've gave it a go while the kids were on summer vacation but time never seemed to be a friend of ours.

However, soon darkness will be upon us at an earlier time and we're so totally gonna to do this. I love, love, love the project because it's got all my favorite things...It gets those creative juices flowing, it's super-cool fun for the whole family, can be entirely made from recycled materials (save those cereal boxes, popsicle sticks and white tissue paper) and it's cheap, cheap, cheap!

Smaller:

This project was one we have had the most fun with recently. First we cut a hole in the bottom of a cardboard box and covered it with tissue paper. Then, by shining a desk light through it in a darkened room we had a wonderfully fun shadow theater. The kids drew the outlines for the puppets (mostly monsters, fairies and dogs for this one) on some cereal box cardboard which we cut out and taped to wooden skewer sticks. Even the most basic puppets came alive and it was fun to be able to go back and make more characters as the stories got more elaborate. This is a great project when you have kids over a range of ages as it can be as complicated or as simple as they need it to be.

Bring on the night and bring on the shadow puppet fun!