Vampire Puppet - Gnome Craft for Halloween

This vampire puppet craft features an adorable vampire gnome that you’ll love – and maybe be a wee bit afraid of. If you love this, check out the ghost hand puppet template too! This post contains affiliate links.

Halloween crafts can be scary or they can be cute, and I like to take things to the cuter end of things. Especially when crafting for kids (or with them), making your crafts cute rather than scary can help make the scarier parts of the holiday more approachable.

With these vampire puppets – turned gnomes – the friendly factor is huge. They can dramatize, play, use them as props, or even as bookmarks!

This craft features a PDF template that can be used two ways:

The easier way: Print it onto white printer cardstock and color your parts. Cut them out and use the cardstock parts to assemble your puppets. Tip: I love Crayola Super Tips for crafts like this! It’s fine enough for doing this and has all the unique shades of color that you want. You can also color it on the back of the template to avoid outline marks.
The prettier way: As provided in the instructions, cut out your template, trace the parts onto the correct paper, cut out, and assemble. This way is fabulous for those of you who don’t mind finer cutting and for older kids.

The template is pretty small so you get two to a page.

While these vampire puppets were designed as just that – puppets – they can easily double as bookmarks. I have people complain when I share bookmarks on craft sticks (they’re too thick and can ruin the book) so I’ll share a few alternatives:

It’s long enough – and the cape of the vampire forms a natural “stopper”. So just skip the stick and use it as-is.
Cut out a long piece of thick cardstock to serve as the “stick” of the bookmark.
Make two vampire gnomes – or outline your whole design and cut out a backing. Glue the two peaks of the hat together at the top. Attach a magnet to each side of the bottom.
Make a backing for only the cape shape. Glue it to the back using as little glue as you can on each die and on the top. You have a corner bookmark (or a finger puppet).

Whatever you plan to do with these vampire gnomes, just have fun!

Download the vampire puppet gnome template

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What you need

How to make a vampire gnome puppet

1. Choose your paper colors for the hat and cape – I recommend black. The beard and ‘stache should be gray or brown (gray makes more sense in this case.) The nose should be beige or brown – or make it white! The cape can be any color but red resembles blood and and purple is Halloween-ish. Don’t forget those fangs! Trace and cut out the parts.

2. Attach the collar trim to the collar portion of the main cape piece.

3. Attach the fang cutouts each side of the bottom of the mustache.

4. Attach the mustache to the top of the beard.

5. Attach the nose in the center of the mustache.

6. Attach the mustache-beard-nose on top of the bottom of the hat cutout. The head of your vampire gnome puppet is
ready.

7. Attach the head to the top side of the cape. The shortest beard hairs are designed to fit just below the collar trim, and the nose should fall roughly at the center of the arch of the collar.