I made a copy of the drawing and cut out the front and side views of the arm pieces. From these, I created patterns of the pieces of the arms. Normally, I cut slots in the cardboard and fit them together like a paper doll’s stand. Slot A into Tab B and all that. The arms are so tiny that it simply isn’t an option, so instead I’m laminating the cross-members on with an extra tab. That means that each arm has six internal “bones,” instead of the usual four.

Once I had the upper and lower arm assembled, I placed them on my drawing to check for scale. Whew. This is the reason that one does drawings, by the way. Nothing sucks quite as much as making two beautiful body parts and realizing that they aren’t in the same scale.

For the joint, I’m using ribbon. Again, normally I’d be using canvas or nylon strap, but she’s wee. Each joint has ribbon in the front and the back. The goal is to have a clean bend, without restrictions, that doesn’t twist. You know, like an actual elbow.

A flat piece of paper goes at the top of the arm to serve as a stop. I don’t want the arm to hyper-extend, so when the upper arm’s bone strikes the stop, it will stay at a natural angle.

I put the assembled arm back on the drawing to make sure there aren’t any surprises. Woe. The angle of the elbow and stop doesn’t allow the arm to straighten quite enough. This means that I have to adjust the pattern.

Right around here, I did question myself because, as I’ve mentioned before, no one will perform with these. It’s hard though to see something that is not right and leave it.

This photo is just here to give you a sense of scale. See that tiny, tiny piece of paper next to my finger? That’s all I had to trim to make the arm hang right. Working at this size, every millimeter counts. When Bill Schafer approached me originally, he asked for ten inch dolls. I countered with sixteen, because, dang, that would have been hard.

Her skin is also watercolor paper. You’ll note that one side of this piece is torn. That’s because I won’t be able to get inside the puppet to glue the pieces together with a scab as I normally do. By deckling the edge of the paper, I’ll be able to blend it a little. It’s like a single thick piece of papier-mache.

And thick is the operative word. To get it to bend smoothly, I use the bone folder, much the way you might use the edge of scissors to get a curl on a ribbon. If I tried to roll it into a tube without this step, I’d get ugly creases. I could also soften it with water to bend it, but then the glue wouldn’t hold because, well, it would be wet.

I glue the cut edge to the interior of the arm. I’ve switched to hotglue for this.

By the way, not all hot glue is created equal. I use a really beefy hi-strength glue. The clear whitish plastic stuff is garbage. Don’t use it for anything that needs to actually hold.

You see how the paper sort of blends on the arm? I put the seam on the inner arm, because it’s the least likely to show.