failed eye experiment #2

The idea to use leather for pupils seemed promising at first...

...until i tried to cut out the oval. I discovered that leather is not easy to cut without getting frayed edges. So leather is not going to look much better than the paint job. I do like the stencil, so here's my next plan; use the stencil and air brush or spray paint the black pupil. Who'd of thought I'd have this much trouble just on the eye balls? I guess I could use the painted pupils, or the round screw pupils, or the leather pupil, it would look okay. But I want it to look perfect, so "If at first you don't succeed bla bla bla... you know the rest."

experiments with eyes

I'm working on the Texas Chili Cook puppet. In my sketch he has oval pupils, not round ones. So I tried to paint the pupils on the ping pong balls with a paint brush and some acrylic paint. Didn't turn out so good. The paint looks sloppy, I can see all the brush strokes. So I tried round pupils with plastic black screws. It looks nice, clean and professional. Problem is; I want him to have oval pupils like in the sketch, I feel it is important to his personality. So I need to try something else. I'm thinking I might make a stencil from something tacky and use an airbrush. Or I may use the stencil to cut out 2 identical ovals from fabric, felt or leather, and glue that to the ping pong ball.

up to my eyeballs in it

Until I dye the foam the color I want for the Texas Chili Chef, I can't put together his head. But I could make his eye balls! So here you see 2 ping pong balls and some googly eyes I bought at the craft store. I need the black pupils from the googly eyes. I will crack open the google eyes and take the pupils out. They won't be googly on my puppet.

holding together

The glue is dried, I took the string off. You can see how my arm will fit through the puppet body. And you will notice the seam in the picture on the right. It is actually the marker line I drew when I initially traced the pattern to cut out, the seam itself is tight. Just for that one seam, which is about 9 inches long, I used one whole glue stick in the glue gun. You can't be cheap with the glue, the puppet has to hold together.

MY FIRST GLUED PIECE

YAY! My first glued piece of puppet, the body cylinder. I tied the stings around it so it holds it's cylindrical shape until the glue completely dries. Glue guns are fun, and VERY hot. I did make a small mistake, it won't effect the puppet because this part is all covered with clothes, but my mistake was that I glued the cylinder inside out. The foam I used is upholstery foam, one side f the foam has a meshy skin and the other side is just foam. I wanted the foam part on the outside and the mesh on the inside, but I glued it with the mesh on the outside and the foam on the inside.

glue gun time

I am going to glue the foam body pattern together first; the reason for this is because it is my first time using a glue gun, and rather than start on the head, I will practice my glue gun skills on a part of the puppet that will be hidden by clothes. By the time I have to glue the head I will have a better hang of how to use a glue gun.

craft store

My puppet should have been completed in a few days, but it's been a few months and I still don't have anything resembling a puppet yet. I worked on it for 2 days in the past few months; I just haven't had time to devote a day to this puppet yet. But that day will come! In the meantime I have been buying various supplies at the craft store to use on my puppets. Ping Pong balls for eyes, red pipe cleaners for my Red Ant antenna, various furry swatches for beards and eye brows, and ostrich feathers for longer hairs. I still need to buy myself a good sewing machine.