Eyeball hair sticks!

These are quick and easy to make, and I think they make a delightfully creepy Halloween season accessory.

You will need:

• Ping pong style eyeball favors- I got mine from a local party and costume supply store, a dozen for under 2.00
• decent quality disposable chopsticks- either scavenged from a meal, or in my case, I found a big bag of them at a thrift store, 61.5 pairs for 5.50! (one was packaged all by itself)
• Modelling clay
• drill and a larger drill bit- I used my Fiskar's Craft Drill which is hand powered
• E-6000 or similar glue

Not shown:

• saw
• 400 grit sandpaper
• Craft knife

Make a rolled snake with the modelling clay then make a ring, set the eyeball firmly on the ring. This creates a good base to hold the round shape for drilling.

Drill hole in the eyeball. You only want it going through one side of the eyeball, and I really like my craft drill for drilling small plastic things because it's quiet, doesn't go fast enough to melt the plastic, and it's harder to accidentally go too far through it.

Saw off the connecting top of the chop sticks, and sharpen the tip a bit with the craft knife. Disposable chopsticks are reasonably smooth to begin with. Smooth it further with the 400 grit sandpaper so they won't snag hair.

Using the craft knife, enlarge the hole as necessary in the eyeball so the top of the chop stick will fit into it, shaving off bits of plastic. A little big is fine.

Put a dollop of glue on the top of the chop stick, and push it in the eye all the way until it hits the top of the eye. Repeat with the other chop stick. Set aside and let the glue cure.

If you want, you could add a dripping blood effect along the chop stick using red nail polish. 

Model is the Turnip Girl, but I made a pair for each of us yesterday. My husband finds them pretty creepy!

Eyeball coloring page

I'll also be posting a box later with this eyeball mandala design. It's a lot of fun, reminds me of a "bull's eye" because of the dart board like section and the eyes. I hope you enjoy the coloring page! For more coloring pages, check out the link on the sidebar. Click on the image for the larger version.

This mandala is in my self-published book -

Fun iron on patches

Recently I got some Avery brand printable fabric*. At 3 dollars a sheet, it's less expensive to do iron on transfers or iron fabric to freezer paper and print it that way for a lot of uses. What it IS good for isn't really one of the project ideas listed on the package.
Iron on patches. This stuff has iron on adhesive on the back, is fairly stiff, and can be punched with craft punches. You can make cool band patches, or peace symbols or other things. Save it for stuff you'll hand wash. I'm not sure how it will hold up in the washer.
This is actually what I'll use it for. My 62 year old dad would rather have me repair a small hole in a jacket than replace the jacket, but he's terribly picky about patches. He wants either patches that match the fabric, or he wants something cool. I was spending a couple dollars each on little skulls and such for his jackets when I found some that were the right size. With this, and a one inch circle punch, I can make a bunch of little circle patches that he'll like.
So to test it, I printed a sheet of well, fairly random things. Some of it is meant for other projects, but the sheet included a bunch of 1 inch and 2 inch circle designs like the one above. That's one of my compass rose designs .
Then I punched it using my handy dandy 2 inch circle punch, and ironed it on to my son's messenger bag. As you can see, it punched very cleanly and seems strongly adhered.
Anyway, all that to say.. here's the designs I used for some of the patches. I didn't format them to print on a full sheet, but you can get 12 2 inch circles from one 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper. Click on the images for the full sized 300 ppi PNG images. You don't have to use these for iron-ons, they can be used as stickers for scrapbooks or whatever crafty use you have in mind.

* Amazon.com affiliate links help pay for this site and support my book addiction.

Eyeball Gift Box

This is one of those fussy to cut type boxes that it's really important to score all folds before cutting, and folding it  before gluing it. But if you do all that, it makes a fairly decent sized creepy trinket box.

I hope you like it! As usual, click on the image for the full sized version, print at 100 dpi on card stock.
Double sided tape or a tape runner sort of thing works well to put these together. I think a glossy clear spray would look nice on it as well to seal the ink and make it all a bit shiny.