When TV puppeteer Sally Preisig met teacher Sarah Gunn via the local NCT, it sparked off not only a friendship, but also a whole new business aimed at creative youngsters.

Crafty Kids Ltd was launched in November 2003 and has this fantastic website. The company produces puppet and craft kits for children.

But ... Little did you know that when you buy a Crafty Kids Kit, it has been designed by a Tweenie!

Sally, a mother of two, has made and operated many full-size puppets for numerous TV productions since 1988. She was the original voice, puppeteer and animatronics operator of Bella. She made the prototype Tweenie dolls and was co-constructor/developer of the full-size Tweenies characters, as well as making their original costumes.

She was a puppeteer for Jim Henson's Muppets on the 1992 production, A Muppet Christmas Carol, and her other credits include Fun Song Factory, Bits in Bits and Bobs, Mac Donald's Farm, Peggy Patch in Playdays and Dogsby on Cbeebies' The Shiny Show, for which she made the puppets Dogsby, Mukka and Tigs.

Sally and Sarah initially designed all the Crafty Kids kits, but Sally now runs the company entirely on her own. Sally said " It is very hard to keep ploughing endless amounts of time and money into a young business when you also have kids, so Sarah decided to call it a day. I was used to running my other puppet and costume company Mimics Productions so now I have simply amalgamated the two companies together.

Crafty Kids Ltd came about as a result of a desire to produce interesting kits for children that contained more than a few pieces of paper and a sequin. "As mothers, we were fed up buying very expensive, mass-produced craft kits for our children. Even then, one still had to find half the ingredients to complete them, so we designed the complete package!

At the beginning I just started designing the first pack with bits and pieces I already had, kicking around my puppet workshop. Sarah then waded through websites and piles of catalogues, sourcing the materials to make each of the designs. When we hit a dead end with an item, Sarah found the people who could make them especially for us instead.

But that was the easy bit - to make each kit we used to risk our fingers daily, as we had to cut up, sand, punch holes, thread, fill pots, label and pack everything up by hand".

In 2007 a fortuitous meeting with a very successful businessman meant that Sally was given the introduction to a great factory in China and they now make all the fabulous kits that you will see in the following pages.

Each Crafty Kids kit now comes in its own colourful spotted recycled cardboard tub, complete with a brush, paints, glue and full instructions. The puppets have specially made treasury tags for the threading, so there is no knotting involved.

All kits are EN71 passed for 36+ months but the whole range is ideally aimed at children aged 4 +

Sally is absolutely chuffed to bits that she's picked up a bronze practical preschool award 2007 for the Horse Puppet Kit and a Highly commended at the 2008 Gift of the Year awards in the Eco friendly class for the Dinosaur Puppet Kit, as well as 3 other short listings in the same awards for the Horse and Giraffe Puppet kits too!

I hope you like the Crafty Kids products and I welcome any comments big or small.