Stage a Nativity myth shadow puppet play with kids!

When I held a poll among my readers, I asked what shadow puppet set they’d like to see me create, and I got a lot of interesting answers. The one that popped up often was a Nativity scene.

While Nativity scenes were not put up for Christmas in the country where I grew up, I saw children perform them in many movies, and it seemed like an interesting addition to our shadow theatre.

I started to work on it a year ago, and I’m happy to finally show it this Christmas.

As a shadow puppet set, the Nativity myth set is one of my favourites; the other current favourite is the Create-a-Fairy-tale set. I worked on them both simultaneously, using all the skills I learned from making my previous shadow puppets.

Granted, the previous ones were all based on 19th-century fairy tales, and I felt like I should use a different style for the Nativity myth set. The Nativity silhouettes are less frilly and more abstract than the rest of our puppets. Flowing folds of robes contrast with the spiky straw edges of the barn and the manger.

The play has many characters, so I tried to choose the essential ones. Depending on how many puppeteers you can enlist, you may want to reduce the amount even more.

If we have a shadow puppet show with a screen and there are too many objects involved, I recommend adhering a few right to the screen with a double-sided tape. That creates static objects and frees hands.

Nativity Scene Characters

First, we have Mary, Joseph, the baby, and the angel. The baby’s silhouette was designed so that he could be set down in a cradle but could also be picked up and snuggled close to Mary.

The shepherd with the barn animals.

The magi, also known as the wise men or three kings.

The printable designs for these shadow puppets can be found here.

You can also get them with our Silhouette Christmas Bundle. The book is a collection of various ideas for Christmas-themed silhouette crafts—ornaments, lanterns, cards, tags and toys. Altogether, there are fifteen silhouette crafts with over sixty pages of printable silhouette designs. Print and make—it’s that easy!

How to Cut Shadow Puppets

The post contains Amazon affiliate links to the products we used.

Read this article for the most detailed tutorial on how to cut the puppets. You can also watch a video documenting the process of me cutting one there!

You will find the puppet designs to be in JPEG formats: that way, you can use them for printing on paper and cutting by hand or for importing into the software of a silhouette cutting machine. Regardless of what you do for cutting, I recommend using 80-90 lb black paper for the puppets. 65 lb could do as well, but will be a little on a thin side; 110+ lb would work great for stiffness, but increases the difficulty of cutting. 80-90 lb is my happy medium. Bamboo skewers make convenient puppet sticks.

1 — If you have a silhouette cutting machine (Silhouette or Cricut), you can import the designs and and have it cut in no time. Here are a couple of useful articles:

How to import a JPEG image in the Silhouette Studio

How to import a JPEG image in the Cricut Design Space

2 — There is still nothing wrong with cutting with scissors! I recommend printing the silhouettes on black paper. It’s a little more difficult to see the design than on white paper, but it’s not at all impossible, as you can see for yourself on the picture below. That way the puppets are black on both sides, and little discrepancies between the printed design and the actual cut will not show up.

My favourite tools for cutting are:

standard scissors for cutting out general shapes and straight lines
precision manicure scissors for cutting out tiny details
hobby knife for cutting out inner design, like folds in clothes and windows in buildings

For a demonstration, you can hop over to this project and watch a video of me cutting a silhouette design.

Download the designs

Buy the puppets already cut!

And have the beginning of a new family tradition, with a mysterious shadow play retelling the ancient myth of Christmas!

If you have a shadow puppet show, share your photos with us! We love seeing them. You can post them on our Facebook page, email me or tag us on Facebook or Instagram – @adventureinabox!