KAYSVILLE — It started with what Kaysville resident Carolyn Frank calls a "really ugly sister missionary puppet" but has grown into a puppeteer's paradise, based out of a gray business building at 1343 W. Flint Meadow Drive, Suite No. 3.
Today Puppetorium.com is an online puppet superstore that sells puppets, marionettes, stages, scripts and more.
But the seeds for the puppet-supplying company were sown more than two decades ago while Frank was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alberta, Canada.
"I had a companion who had taken a puppetry class at BYU, but she was not much of a seamstress," Frank said. "But we needed a puppet one day for a zone meeting."
So Frank tried her hand at making her first puppet — a sister missionary puppet — that she said was really ugly but "sufficed."
Later in her service, other missionaries expressed their frustration with trying to teach young children who had drug, alcohol and tobacco problems.
"They couldn't even begin to teach them spiritual things until they kind of helped fixed up that health issue there, and so I got the idea, 'Well, let's use puppets to help teach them,' " Frank said.
Frank crafted a puppet that resembled a bottle of beer and one that looked like a package of cigarettes that the missionaries used with songs to teach the children the dangers of smoking and drinking.
"It was very effective, and I found that the puppets could be used in more and more things with my missionary work," she said.
After her mission, Frank attended Brigham Young University where one summer she took a puppetry class.
"I was married at that point, and my husband said, 'Well, these puppets are cute, why don't you put them into boutiques,?' " Frank said.
The puppets premiered at Payson Golden Onion Days. Shortly after, with the help of a music company that wanted various puppets to go along with its songs, Frank started selling puppets outside of Utah.
For many years she created the puppets in her basement, both in Orem and then in Kaysville after she moved there in 1989. At one point she had several other seamstresses helping her with productivity.
But demand was steadily increasing.
"Finally it got to the point where I needed to either get out of the hobby or into the business, one or the other, because I had all the work I could handle with just word of mouth," Frank said.
In 1996, Frank moved out of her basement and into a small building on 200 North in Kaysville where she sold puppets and party supplies at the Puppetorium.
In the front of the store Frank sold puppets and party supplies, while in the back of the store she and other employees made puppets to sell wholesale mostly to educational catalogues and stores. But Frank said it got to a point where she had two separate businesses and she had to decide between the two.
In November 2001, Frank decided to focus once again on the puppet-making side of the business and moved it to its current west Kaysville location. She decided to keep the Puppetorium and put it online as www.puppetorium.com. Through the site Frank sells a plethora of puppet supplies from the puppets themselves to stages, scripts, CDs, marionettes and more. She sells her own brand of puppets, Puppet Partner, as well as other brands.
Frank's best-selling puppets are family puppets — moms, dads, grandpas and grandmas. The public helper puppets — police officers, doctors, firemen — and Bible characters are also popular, she said.
But Puppetorium.com is just a minor part of the business. Today the main part lies in wholesale manufacturing. The majority of the puppets are now made in China.
Frank doesn't sew the basic puppets anymore and instead focuses on the company's new prototypes. She said she loves the creative side of her job and has been able to make some interesting puppets recently by doing some custom work.
This spring she made two ugly aunts, Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge, for Bountiful High School's production of "James and the Giant Peach."
"Oh, those were fun," Frank said. "Those were so fun to make because I didn't have to worry about making a pattern, or making them over and over again. It was a one-time thing so it was more of a piece of art."
At Christmastime Frank made a bright red crawfish for a production in New Orleans and crafted a life-size Doug Miller puppet for Channel 2 News to go with the station's Festival of Trees entry.
Right now, she is working on an Ohio Buckeye puppet for a woman to sell at Ohio State University.
Frank also uses her creativity to write and put together education packages for the company. Most of the puppets for the educational sets are made in Kaysville. Right now Frank is working on a special-needs packet and has made puppets with wheelchairs and crutches to go along with the packet.
Kaysville resident Pam Evans has worked with Frank for six years making puppets. She said Frank's creative ability is amazing.
"Someone will show her a picture, and she can copy that and turn that into a three-dimensional puppet, and it works and it's cute," Evans said.
Evans said she enjoys working with Frank because of her ambition.
"She just has a desire to make a better world," Evans said, adding that Frank has created a niche with her educational packets.
But despite her talents and creative flair, Frank never imagined she would one day own a puppet-making business. Although she grew up with the love of sewing, Frank said she planned on being a scientist when she got older.
Today, her puppet-producing profession has brought her full circle. She is helping the LDS Church make puppets for missionaries to use to teach young children in foreign lands. The puppets assist the church's missionaries in Third World countries with teaching cleanliness, tobacco prevention, alcohol prevention and more. They have been sent as far away as Mongolia and Russia.
Frank said making puppets that help teach young children valuable life lessons is the most rewarding part of her business.
"I got this feedback that one time after a little 9-year-old boy in Russia had seen the puppet show on anti-smoking, he came up to the missionaries and said, 'Oh will you help me, I want to quit smoking,' " Frank said. "He was 9 and the puppets had motivated him. I get feedback like that all the time, and that is the best part of it, knowing that they can help somebody."
E-mail: nclemens@desnews.com