Once we decided to have an area of the set be Kermit’s swamp, we needed Kermit to have a banjo to play in that swamp. Yes, I could have reached out to our community to see if I could borrow a banjo, but I thought I could build one (and then we wouldn’t have to worry about damaging someone’s banjo). Below are the steps I went through to build Kermit’s banjo.

I started with a large cylindrical cement form (available from a hardware store like Lowe’s or Home Depot), which I was going to use for Kermit’s log. I cut off a small portion of it for the round part of the banjo.

After that I used duct tape to tape some circular cardboard to the front and back of the cylindrical tube, added a thin wood piece as the neck of the banjo and added some cardboard at the end for the headstock.

At our community painting day Shloka painted it black, and I painted the front face white.

Once that paint was dry, I used a white oil-based pen to mark the frets and a silver pen for position markers, strings and then to add a silver rim around the main body.

I added a rainbow strap (some 80s rainbow suspenders that we had) and voila! Kermit’s banjo was done!