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Discussion Starter · #1 ·
I got this thing, I don’t really like to get screwed pricewise when I get Halloween anything. Cheap is good in my books, and a lot of the stuff a person makes themselves ends up better and more satisfying than what you can buy outright. I thought to myself, “self, I need a jar of realistic looking eyes.” So, being the cheap [email protected]##$ that I am, I made a batch of eyes that look pretty good if I say so myself.

You will need:
1. A package of ping pong balls
2. Deep Red blood color gloss paint
3. Yarn the same color as the paint
4. A printout of iris from the web (I think I got these at easy eyes)
5. A tweezers
6. A scissors (run, do not walk to get this)
7. A paintbrush
8. Clear nail polish/Nail hardener (I used hard as nails) make sure whatever you use that it is glossy, you don’t want dried up eyeballs, gloss makes them pop! View attachment 4582


Make it one stop and hit Wally world. Though, when I went to evil mart, they were out of ping pong balls due to the popularity of beer pong!


This is my first tutorial so I hope you understand my instructions!

1st, take the scissors and pop your right eye out of the socket. (Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m a 31 year old toddler)

First, take a ping pong ball and find the logo. The logo will end up being the point directly opposite your iris. I will call this the top for now. Beginning with the top, paint ball covering all but the bottom ¼ of the ball somewhat feathering the bottom portion. (check my crappy out of focus pictures for visual) If you put the ball logo side down on the floor, you should just be able to see a corona of red. If needed put on extra layers of red to cover the logo.
View attachment 4583

Next, cut out an iris of your liking. I found after some experimenting that if I cut just the circle out, it was easier to work with than cutting the circle iris out and cutting the iris in striations toward the pupil. Take your ball (I use a piece of scrap Styrofoam ,shot glass, I also turned an Elmers glue stick into stand) and put a generous dab of clear polish on the white center, bigger than your pupil. (this doesn’t have to be perfect, there’s plenty of leeway on this project) Using your tweezers, place your cut out iris on the middle of your white circle on top of your polish. Carefully push on top of the paper iris and shape the iris to the round of the ping pong ball. After you have the iris secured enough that it doesn’t lift (the clear polish doesn’t need to be totally dry) take a healthy dab of clear polish and cover your newly laid down iris. You don’t have to go nuts with the polish, but if in doubt add more. (if your iris starts lifting, no problem, just blow on the area while pressing down with your tweezers. This worked for me) You can not ruin the eye by putting to much gloss on it. Let that dry. View attachment 4584

I next took my eye and applied a smooth layer of gloss to the white areas left on the eyeball. Grab the red yarn and get a teeny amount of fiber, the less the better, only a couple of strands. Lay them in the wet polish and position them so they lie on the eyeball. Do not lay the strands over the iris. Over the red portion is fine. I laid the strands from iris to bottom. The great thing is the variations in the yarn look awesome.
The final step is to brush the clear polish all over the eyeball. I also found that I could build up the polish in a dome shape over the iris, reducing the indentations left by the paper and polish in earlier steps. Have fun, most of all, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
:)
View attachment 4585 View attachment 4586
 

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these look great, and combining them with Daveinthegrave's eye motion set-up would really add an awesome/creepy/realistic addition to any ones home haunt. I love the fact that you used the yarn as veins, and the printouts look much better than I have expected them too. Maybe even adding some more yarn to the back...or maybe some painted surgical tubing...as an "optic nerve" would be a cool addition...now all im picturing is eyes popped out of sockets...

well, anyway very well done!!

-DK
 

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Agree with Prop Man on this one, the yarn threads for the veins really bring out the detail. A very clever and inexpensive way to make eyeballs. Thank you!
 

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These look fantastic! Great work. I want to try it and have already begun but here's my first two snags that I wonder if anyone can help me solve. First when I started painting the nail polish on the printed iris it washed it away. All of the image was wiped clean. The iris was not fresh off the printer although for lack of a color printer I printed a sheet at wal-mart's digital photo thing (part of the big sheet with more eyes that was posted elsewhere in the forums here.) I thought the kodak prints they made were waterproof... I know that doesn't equal any liquid proof .. but I had my hopes. I tried dripping some nail polish onto the other iris I had cut out rather than brush, it didn't wash it away but still released the "ink". My shoot from the hip idea one is to pick up some spray varnish and take that to the whole sheet before I cut out anymore. Would that do any good or just make it worse? Also would anyone have any tips on avoiding bubbles in the nail polish? oh and what's a good size proportion to get the iris's about normal sized? the sheets I got they look a little small, but passable
 

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Discussion Starter · #20 ·
Well, my thought is to try whatever you like to get it the way you want it. The cheapest route I think would be to get a friend to print off a sheet of iris' on the computer, then you don't have to worry about another thing not working. Bubbles in the nail polish, I was not to concerned with this detail, I try to think, well, if I ripped an eye out, would it look somewhat like this or is anyone other than us Halloween freaks really going to care or be close enough to see the small bubbles? My thought is to maybe use a pin to release the bubbles while the polish is still wet, if that doesn't work, I don't know the answer to this one. Like I said, as long as you are having fun, do whatever you want to try, thats what makes these fun!
 
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