Norajean.comFACE OFF
Clay Eyes, Plastic or Glass
especially and can pop or can cause bubbles behind the finished eye when baked and the air expands inside the eye. The plastic eyes that are made for the doll making...those sold in the craft stores that look like just the front of the eye, not the hollow ball type...will hold up to the heat and do bake well into the polyclays. With the plastic eyes you do need to be careful with using metal tools, like the dental picks and such, because they will scratch the plastic.
This is not first hand knowledge, but information from a doll maker..Tina Bleeah...who designs dolls for Bell Molds.
Dag
first is - one less thing to buy. Now if clayers have the money, got
the source, the brain shares to spare, one could use the glass eyes
that doll makers use. But they are too big, the ones I've seen at the
stores. Those dolls aren't 1/12 scale and smaller and I'm aiming for
1/12 and smaller. That eyeball cane works with smaller and smaller
scale dolls. I don't have to hunt around for eyes that fit and are of
the right color, or sink my money into another supply outside of clay.
I'm lazy and cheap like that. LOL
My focus on tutorials is keeping it cheap, truth be known. I will
assume that everyone is tight on funds. I will assume that folks live
in out of the way places and can't get ahold of more than just clay.
>From there I build the tutorials. Biggest ticket item, clayshapers.
Not to have clayshapers is like painting without brushes. It's a
necessary expense.
The second reason is control over eye color, the iris of the eye is
filled with all sorts of colors, layered like bakalava, and if one's
doll's eyes had that variety, using translucent clay layered with
color, it'll give eyes that are liquid looking. Light will pass into
the layers of translucent and bounce off of them baby blues of the
Paul Newman head. We can get violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor. We can
get yellow rimmed and blood shot eyes of a rummy, if we had a mind to.
Control... with eyeball cane, we decide what color our doll's eyes
will have.
Also...one of the unique qualities of polymer clay that it shares with
glass is that reduction process. Making one wedge of layered sheets
reduced and sliced you make a circle and you have eyeball cane. It's a
good cane to start out with for new clayers. One can put eyeballs on
everything. I made dice with eyeballs instead of dots, Teri has that
now. Used that same old eyeball cane reduced to the size of dandruff.
Polymer clay is good that way, to take our designs and bring them down
to smaller and smaller sizes. So one eyeball cane could be used for
many different sizes of doll faces if one reduced the cane like a
cone, with a large end on one side and reduced to mini size on the
other end. It's handy. A little goes a long way.
That eyeball cane tute was made in 1999.
http://www.geocities.com/claystress/MSATeyegroup.html (gone)
Eyeball cane Demo Check this one out instead
I am using up the last of it now. It's gone on Tour with me. Traveled
to Canada, slices of that eyeball cane was left behind me like bread
crumbs in the forest. LOL
Those are my reasons for pushing the eyeball cane as part of this face
sculpting process. But everyone can use what ever they have on hand.
Holeless beads are used sometimes, glass ones. But the look is sort of
weaselish, the whole eye being black like that, doesn't look human.
Again...creeeeepy.
eeeek...