Eyes Solid black eyes!

I've been looking for ages for a place to get some solid black eyes with no success. But recently I was watching a YouTube video about crafting for minis and dioramas where they used scrapbooking sticker pearls and painted them to be rivets. And it got me thinking.... If they're the right size, could they be eyes?

So I made my way to one of our local craft stores (I think it was Michael's but I looked in like 4 so my memory is shaky) and got myself some of these little pearl stickers and a bottle of Mod Podge Dimensional Magic, totalling about $12 altogether. I had black acrylic paint at home so I was all set.




I don't have an airbrush yet and I didn't want to spend the money on a small can of black spray paint. I painted using a slightly wetted brush and applied a solid layer, waited for it to dry, and then repeated that 2 more times so that it was opaque.


My initial thought was to put a small elastic around the pearl to make a reservoir to keep the "resin"/gloss from flowing off. I did 3 drops and it worked too well! It welled up to cover almost half of it. So I carefully pulled the elastic off and watched how much flowed off. It wasn't too much so I let it set for 24 hours.


And here we are! I'm actually happy with it! There's some things I think I could do to keep it a little glossier but overall I'm super pleased with the result as a proof of concept of nothing else.



Things to try next time:
1. Sand off any imperfections on the pearl with a fine grit sandpaper
2. Airbrush/spray the pain so there's less texture to the pain
3. A 2nd and maybe 3rd layer of the gloss
4. Using a microfiber cloth to handle to avoid getting my sandpaper fingerprints on the eye itself
5. Using a softer eye putty because I think pressing it in may have caused the gloss to split from the paint a little.

Lemme know what you think! Any pointers or suggestions are always welcome!

 

I looked for glass beads too. I remembered seeing that on here somewhere and may its just the season or trends or where I am but I absolutely struck out. They had a lot that were gem-cut or had some weird texture to them. Always so close but never quite right!

 

Absolutely! I feel like it was easier to adjust the position side there was a flat base to press on. They sit much easier and it took less eye putty to hold in place that full/ round eyes