Portable Puppet Theatre #2 This folding hand-puppet theatre is designed to unfold and bolt with wing-nuts onto a custom-made wooden folding table.  It has draw-string curtains and a plain black back-drop.  The whole assembly folds flat for storage and transportation. Lionel made the "hamburger" puppet from a plastic pet's squeaky toy purchased at a discount store and cut in two, and then added a body, a tongue and ping-pong-ball eyes.  Backing tracks were pre-recorded with sound effects and narrated scripts written by and read by Lionel and others. Photos and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley . 

Miniature Piano for Marionette  This miniature mock grand piano, that Lionel made for the string puppet "Bert", has a speaker inside to play pre-recorded piano music from an external device so that it sounds and looks like the puppet is playing.  It has painted keys and  a matching piano stool.  The music pages were photo-reduced so that their size is appropriate in relation to that of the piano.    This last photo shows the puppeteer, David, playing it in a public street in Murwillumbah NSW, to give you an idea of its relative size. Photos and descriptions courtesy of Lionel Hartley.  Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley . 

Streetside Plant Stand As a fundraiser for the charity ADRA ( www.adra.org.au ), Lionel's wife Rosemary propagated plants for selling.  Lionel made this metal two-tier display stand with a sign and built-in cash collection/donations box. He says it embarrasses him to confess that it needed to be fastened to a nearby tree with a length of chain as seen in the bottom right of the photo. Photo and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley . About ADRA (Video)  

Sideshow Booths These sideshow booths are a few of many designed and made by Lionel with original artwork as fundraisers for the Glen Innes (NSW) Pathfinder club. Out of fairness to all, they all are games of skill and not games of chance.  They were first used at a weekly market at Red Range, NSW.  These photos were taken at a fête day at the Glen Innes SDA Church.  These photos include "Bop My Nose" (Throwing a ball so that it goes through the clown's nose and drops into a bucket below), Horseshoe pitching, a fishing game with child-sized fishing rods with wire hooks on the line to 'catch' plastic fish, each labelled with a specific prize, a coconut shy with painted coconuts, each with a hole to throw a ball through and claim a real coconut as a prize.  A number of others were used but it is not known if these other ones were photographed. Displays were made to easily fold-up for transport and storage. Photos and descriptions courtesy of Lionel Hartley.  Post...

Project-a-sign As a fundraiser in the 1970s, Lionel invented Project-a-sign .  This was a resource for enabling sign-writing, making stage scenery, cycloramas, murals, plywood Christmas displays, posters and banners etc. without the actual user having the need for any artistic skill.  The hand-drawn illustrations, mounted in projection-slides were simply projected onto the posterboard, plywood sheet, canvas flat etc., the user then traced around the outline and painted the article as appropriate. The Project-a-sign project consisted of 2,650 hand drawn original pen-and-ink illustrations that were photo-reduced to the size of a 35mm film slide, printed on transparency film, cut and mounted onto plastic slide mounts. These were then sold in sets of 20 (Sign lettering, traffic signs and subjects such as hobbies, transport, cartoons, music, religious graphics, people, occupations, seasonal illustrations, etc.) The sign lettering slides had the full alphabet on each slide in a dif...

  Clown Car Petkof the Clown squeezed into this tiny clown car at a staged event on Brighton Beach (New Zealand) in the late 1960s. Lionel modified it from a 1930s sheet metal pedal car and anything else he could find that would add lunacy and humour to its appearance. One wheel was originally from a baby's pram, another was a square lid from a discarded metal toolbox, another was made with wooden spokes and a piece of garden hose for a tyre and the fourth was a saucepan lid. These spring-mounted wheels dramatically fell off at the shift of a lever but the clown car still kept moving because of another small set of proper wheels hidden underneath. An opening under the floor allowed the "driver" to move it along with his or her feet. The headlight was hinged with a wire connecting it to the steering wheel so it nodded when the wheel was moved. It had a very loud claxon (klaxon) horn and a brass bell hidden under the bonnet. Pressing the foot against a water-filled rubber h...

 Fairground Train Unfinished project (see below) Take a mini motorcar, remove the doors and bonnet and build a metal surround to resemble a steam train. Make three colourful closed-in 4-wheeled trailers resembling carriages to be pulled behind. This is what Lionel was doing before a shed fire at Eraring, NSW destroyed the lot. Photo and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Published with Lionel's permission by the Friends of Lionel Hartley .