A few years ago Jim Henson's daughter wrote a book about making Muppets which came with lots of bits and pieces to use.I'm not sure if it is still available but it might be worth looking it up.
Depends what kind of hand puppet you want to make. I'm a professional puppet-maker and I might be able to give you some advice, but first I'd need to know a lot more about what you want to achieve. The term "hand puppet" covers dozens of technologies; what do you need them to do? How big do they need to be? How many operators per puppet? Do you want one- or two-handed operation? What kind of materials are you happy working with? And that's just for starters............