![]() ![]() Pupils made from adhesive vinyl or adhesive velvet or felt can be attached to the ball to complete the eye. Balls can be attached using hot glue or contact cement. The ink on the ball can usually be removed with a little rubbing alcohol. Ping pong balls can be used as they come or cut in half. Teddy bear eyes are available at craft stores an come in a variety of sizes and colors. ![]() These eyes can be used alone or integrated into a larger eye using a plastic spoon or other material for the white of the eye. They have a post on the back and little washers that lock onto the post to hold the eye in place. Teddy bear eyes are plastic eyes that have a colored iris and a dark pupil. Just remove the eyelet with your Dremel and sand the back smooth and the button can be glued to the puppet or to the whites of the eye as a pupil. Dome-shaped buttons with the single eyelet on the back work really well. You may create the whites of the eyes with the craft foam and then attach a teddy bear eye.īuttons. For pupils, you may also want to create an iris from one color foam, say blue, and then attach a black pupil. Craft foam can be used for the whites of the eyes and for the pupils. Thank you so much, Teresa! If have any questions, thoughts, or ideas to share about these eyes, please ask and Teresa will answer in comments.Craft Foam. When they’re ready, I’ll be buying a pack of five sets to play with. The creative potential is just totally cool. How cool is that? I’m so excited about Teresa’s ability to hand-cast safety eyes. It’s super fun for me, and I think selling them will fill a much needed niche in the plushie crafting world. By August I plan on selling them in packs of 5 sets of eyes for $1 per pair, so $5 for a set of five. When I do start selling them, I will probably put them in my Sewing Stars Etsy shop. Being able to offer specialty safety eyes to crafters is super exciting! I certainly don’t have the output of a factory, but that will make them all that more unique on the dolls they end up on. I have to make molds of the smaller ones, which I hope I can get to soon! In the meantime I have been making small batches and used them on my own work. I would very much like to sell these online, but right now I only have larger eye molds and I think most people tend to use 6mm and 9mm (I’ve been making 10, 12, & 15). I also like putting in glitter, and the resin obsession website sells glow in the dark powders I also tried out, which is super fun. So I got the solid coloring gels to be able to mix to my heart’s content. I tried some pre-colored resins, but decided, being the artist I am, I wanted to control the colors. I molded the eyes themselves and after some time, finally figured out how to make the mold work with the shaft part. I also used the rubber molding material that’s strong and stretchy, called Alumilite Silicone High Strength Mold Making Rubber. I ordered up supplies and played around…a lot! I got silicone ice cube tray molds and poured with those to get the feel for it. I found excellent videos and tutorials, plus helpful forums on a website called. That renewed my desire to figure out if it was possible to mold my own.Īfter lots of research I decided to try out resin and rubber molds. Then I started playing around with amigurumi a little, and made a jellyfish that I wished I had clear or glittery eyes for. So colored safety eyes were something I had in the back of my mind for quite a while, but never acted on. I ended up using enamel paint, but over time that will wear off. I wanted to make a black kitty doll with green eyes, and well, there are no green safety eyes. The colored safety eye issue came up a while ago for me. Teresa is still sewing and I found out that she’s also making safety eyes! I’ve never heard of anyone casting their own eyes so I asked Teresa if she would show us how it’s done and she agreed to share her process. We met at a few shows and watching her design career inspired me to work on my own. For many years Teresa had a handmade business called Sewing Stars. Last week I reconnected with an old internet friend, Teresa Levy. ![]() If you’ve never worked with safety eyes, you might like this 1-min. ![]() Many softie makers embroider eyes, or paint them on, or cut them from felt and stitch them in place, but by far the easiest way to make a perfect set of eyes on a softie is to use plastic safety eyes. Adorable eyes can make even the simplest shape appealing (and, conversely, unattractive eyes can kinda ruin an otherwise awesome toy). The eyes are the first thing we notice when we see a stuffed animal or doll. ![]()
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