New Eyes...

I know, I know! I'm late with writing this, but I promise I have a good reason. Lately life has been a little complicated, and I have found it difficult to find enough time and motivation to sit down and write this (don't get me wrong, once I start, I love every minute of the experience), and so I've been putting it off and putting it off. That does not mean that I have been idyll, quite the opposite in fact.  I have been having great fun playing with new techniques and venturing into uncharted territories where my art is concerned.

But enough of my whining, let's get right back into it!

I recently tried out a lot of different new ways of making eyes for my dolls, and after spending a huge amount of time researching what other artists do and trying a whole slew of different techniques etc, I have finally found something that I LOVE, and best of all it is so simple!

SO what I'll do is I'll show you how I made these, and then, at the end, I'll tell you some of the other ways that I tried, and if that works for you, then more power to you, as for me, until I find something better, this is probably how I'll be doing my 'eyes' from now on.

Okay, I know that I have another post on eyes, and don't get me wrong, I still really love the look of them, and I especially love the detail in the irises (here is the link to the previous post http://whatsannadoingtoday.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/as-promised.html ), but I had a really hard time keeping them perfectly round and a lot of the finer details tend to get lost when working on the scale that I do, so...

Back to the 'new eyes'.

 I started with these... They are used in paper crafts (I think), and for some reason I actually had to buy mine online because, none of my local craft/cheap shops seemed to have them in the right size. 

As you can see in the photo, they are really small. The size in the bottom left of the package is the size of the hole (which is really the only part I care about), as this will be the size of the iris.

 The reason I love these, is because there is very little that I can do with just some clay and a few paint brushes that is going to distort the perfectly circular hole, keeping our iris looking perfectly round. 

So, I start off by painting the rim of these little eyelets, and I tend to use a pretty dark colour. This is not going to be the colour of the whole eye, and in general the outer ring of the iris is naturally darker.

Once the paint is dry, I fill the holes with clay. I haven't tested this, but I don't think that the colour of the clay really matters as most of it will be coloured/covered with paints etc. I like to use different shades of clay however because it helps me keep track of the matching pairs. (Keep in mind that the clay tends to expand a little bit during the baking process, so what I do is just press the top of it down a little with my finger tips so that the clay is sitting just a little inside the metal ring.) 

Right, once the clay is in place, I go ahead and make a little hole for the pupil. I try and get this as close to the center of the iris as I can, otherwise the whole thing just looks wrong.

At this stage the clay is still not baked, and I just go ahead and paint the raw clay.

Here is where you can do what ever your little heart desires. You can make these as simple or as detailed as you like. 

I, as you might know, tend to go a little over-board, so for these I used a variety of paint, glitter paints (the ones with REALLY fine glitter that my hubby hates), as well as mica powders. Also DON'T forget to use some black paint for the pupils. The holes might look dark enough, now, but once the resin is on it tends to magnify things a little bit, and it might not be dark enough Then, once I was happy with the look I went ahead an baked them.

The reason I bake them at this stage is to make sure that the clay doesn't expand later and make a mess of all of that hard work, especially after the resin goes on..  

Once baked and cooled, I put a single drop of resin on top of reach iris. The hardest part of this is to make sure that there are no air bubbles trapped on the resin, especially in the little pupil hole. A toothpick and some patience takes care of that.

When the resin is cured its time to finish the rest of the eye. 

I take a small ball of white clay (about the size I want the eyes to be), and press that over the top of the eyelet.

I end up with something that looks like this.

A bit of gentle rubbing soon reveals that lovely iris. The resin protects the paints etc, and makes the clay slide off the iris really easily.

Once I reach the point where my fingers are just not cutting it, I take a slightly damp cotton swab and make sure that I get as much of the clay as possible off of that iris. At this point I am not too concerned with keeping the sclera (the white part) perfectly round.

 As soon as I have the iris completely exposed, that is when I start with the cleanup and making sure that the eye is the right shape etc.

 And there you have it: a beautiful eye. These go back into the oven to bake the whites and, once they are cooled, I move on to the final step in preparing these eyes for their future faces.

After making sure that the eyes are completely cooled. I get ready to put on a final layer of resin. This helps to seal and protect all of that work, but it also gives the eyes a lovely glossy look.

I have found, and used, a different kind of resin for this project. I hated having to try and mix that small an amount of the two part resin (I was literally working with as little as a quater of a ml (0.25ml) of each part of the resin), and still there seemed to be so much of it wasted afterwards. 

In this project I used something called Gel du Soleil, a UV curing epoxy resin that doesn't need any mixing and can be used straight out of the little bottle, and I must say that it has been a joy to work with (although it is a little expensive, but I found it to be well worth the cost). 

The only problem I found is that it is really stinky, but good ventilation quickly takes care of that. The best part is that all that it takes to cure this is about 15 minutes in the afternoon sun. It makes life so much easier and faster, and making these eyes only took me a few hours this afternoon (including baking and curing) rather than the day or two that the others took - mostly due to the lengthy curing times of the two part resins.

And that is all there is to it.

Aren't they pretty?

This is a face I sculpted using the eyelet eyes:

(I couldn't decide which photo was better, so I'll put both)

Sadly however she died in an uncontrolled temper tantrum that I may or may not have had. 

On the plus side, the eyes worked really well and I am quite pleased with how they look, once sculpted into a face.

And now, as promised, here are a few other ways I tried making eyes with a little less success:

(This is some of the cane eyes from before, slices and pre-baked)

 

All in all I must say that even though it is more than a little frustrating to have some experiments fail, I defiantly had a LOT of fun trying out new things and I am desperately in love with the new eyes, so right now I am off to go and make some new faces!

Until next time,

ACL

P.S. Just a quick look at all the different supplies I used to paint and colour my eyes:

Most of the paints that I use are the cheaper brands from the dollar store etc, and I find that they work perfectly fine.

My new favourite type of paint.

The one on the bottom left is cosmetic glitter, the rest are mica powders.

I really love tooth picks, I find them to be super useful, especially in doing some of the fine detail work.

PPS   I have been using a new communications platform, and if you are interested in contacting me with questions and/ or comments, find me instantly (messages are sent to my phone) here:

https://reaches.me:8443/urlchat.html?guestid=6aa28459a91aad02692a9334f633919a

Its a fairly unique platform with a huge range of uses, but I like the chat. Alternatively, download it form the PlayStore. Search for chatWORLD or follow this link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.world.chatworld&hl=en