You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

(click image to enlarge)

My husband is involved in a Community Theater in our area. He's currently playing Linus in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and this is his third production with the company. Unfortunately, I was out of town this past weekend when his show opened.

Since I couldn't be there in person, I decided to send a few "surprises" to the cast to wish them a great opening. I made cookies for the cast and director (each cast member got 4 vanilla cookies with sprinkles in a "character" color) and to go with the casts' cookies I made little post cards. The post cards had their characters on them as well as a quote from the show.

I also wanted to make a sign, because I knew that would last longer than the cookies. When my husband did his first show at the theater (Music Man), I made a hand written sign. This time, I wanted to do something a little cuter and a little more personal.

I decided to paper piece together each of the characters in the show. I used the Peanuts website as a reference. I cut out all of the characters in one solid color (peach for the people, white for Snoopy). I then cut out the clothes and other accesories. Once all of my pieces were cut out, I assembled them.

(click image to enlarge)

They definitely looked a little creepy without any outlines and markings on them. I wanted to be sure that I got the outlines and markings as close as possible to what the actual cartoons look like. I used a pencil first for some of the markings- typically the faces and on Snoopy his ears. After that, I finalized the pieces by going over the pencil with a gel pen, and I made the "outer" outline using a black marker.

They don't look identical to what Charles Schulz drew, but I don't think they should. I think they turned out quite nicely, and the cast loved the sign.